{"id":13422,"date":"2011-12-28T10:51:31","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T18:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=13422"},"modified":"2011-12-28T10:58:44","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T18:58:44","slug":"obama-admits-drone-war-in-somalia-creates-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/28\/obama-admits-drone-war-in-somalia-creates-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Admits Drone War in Somalia Creates Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

From yesterday’s Washington Post<\/em>, in an article entitled “Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

But the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, it is admitted by the Obama administration that al-Shabab is merely “a regional menace” that does not pose a direct threat to the United States. It is also explicitly acknowledged that unleashing a drone war against the group is likely to promote them into an international terrorist group “determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.”<\/p>\n

Of course, we’ve been harping on these very points at Antiwar.com since the beginning. I’m glad to hear the Obama administration, at least according to the Washington Post<\/em>, understands the fundamentals of our interventions in Somalia. My fear is obviously that we’ve already passed that threshold.<\/p>\n

U.S. intervention in Somalia doesn’t begin and end with the drone war. As Jeremy Scahill has reported<\/a>, the Obama administration is running<\/a> secret CIA prisons which confine uncharged individuals in terribly inhumane conditions without access to legal council, building up a Somali intelligence agency and giving weapons to thugs and murderous warlords in\u00a0a proxy war<\/a>, and deploying Joint Special Operations Command on the ground in Somalia. Add to that the U.S. cooperation in Kenya’s invasion and military assault<\/a> on Somalia in recent months, as well as\u00a0U.S. support for the Ugandan regime<\/a> which also contributes to fighting al-Shabab. Go back even further to 2006 when the Bush administration sponsored Ethiopia’s military invasion of Somalia, an action which helped give rise to al-Shabab in the first place. Covert missions in Somalia go back to 2003, at least<\/a>. All this and we haven’t even delved into the Somalia interventions of the 1990’s.<\/p>\n

If we’re concerned about turning al-Shabab “from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil” we better do more than give them drone-war-lite. Or rather, we better do much, much less.<\/p>\n

(h\/t Charles Davis)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From yesterday’s Washington Post, in an article entitled “Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing“: But the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil. Here, it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13422"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13426,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13422\/revisions\/13426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13422"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}