The Crusade

From Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

Actually, if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries…

As always, the most confounding aspect of the reaction to the latest attempted terrorist episode is the professed confusion and self-righteous innocence that is universally expressed. Whether justified or not, we are constantly delivering death to the Muslim world. We do not see it very much, but they certainly do. Again, independent of justification, what do we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and bomb Muslim countries and arm and enable others to do so? Isn’t it obvious that our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims — subjected to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim civilians at our hands, even if unintended — to want to return the violence?

From the cited NYT:

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels…

Qaeda militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting attacks more frequently on foreign embassies and other targets…

Al Qaeda’s profile in Yemen rose sharply a year ago, when a former Guantánamo Bay detainee from Saudi Arabia, Said Ali al-Shihri, fled to Yemen to join Al Qaeda and appeared in a video posted online. Several other former Guantánamo detainees have also joined the group…

Yemen’s remote areas are notoriously lawless, but the country’s chaos has worsened in the past two years, as the government struggles with an armed rebellion in the northwest and a rising secessionist movement in the south. Yemen is running out of oil, and the government’s dwindling finances have affected its ability to strike at Al Qaeda.

From the cited Chris Floyd:

There is apparently no path blazed by George W. Bush that Barack Obama will not eagerly follow. Surges, assassinations, indefinite detention, defense of torture, senseless wars and rampant militarism — in just a few short months, we’ve seen it all.

To this dismaying record of complicity and continuity, we can add an increasing direct involvement in the horrific, hydra-headed conflict in Somalia, whose latest round of fiery hell was instigated by the American-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in late 2006. Under Bush, U.S. forces were deeply and directly enmeshed in the murderous action, dropping bombs on fleeing refugees, “renditioning” other refugees to the tender mercies of Ethiopia’s notorious prisons, and even sending in death squads to clean up after missile strikes and bombings…

Clinton has pledged to double the recently announced supply of American weapons to Somalia’s “transitional government” — a weak reed cobbled together by Western interests from various CIA-paid warlords and other factions, and now headed, ironically, by the former leader of the aforementioned fledgling state overthrown by Washington. (Yes, it is hard to tell the players without a scorecard — or even with one. But if you follow the weapons and the money, you can usually tell who is temporarily on which side at any given moment.)…

the new American assistance is not confined to stuff that can kill more Somalis; it also includes – wait for it again — U.S. military “advisors” to help “train” the forces of the ever-collapsing transitional government.

From Djibouti:

After more than nine months of work and $12 million in funding, a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules became the first aircraft to utilize a new apron at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (CLDJ), December 22, 2009, marking the beginning of operational missions on the apron known as ‘Enduring Ramp’.

“Initially, Camp Lemonnier was built as an expeditionary base with expeditionary hardware,” said Lieutenant junior grade John Woods, the air operations officer at CLDJ. “The opening of this concrete ramp confirms that Camp Lemonnier is transitioning into an enduring role, thus naming the ramp Enduring.”

Notice that Djibouti and Yemen bottle up the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aden. The strategic importance is obvious.

From Steve Clemons at TPMCafe:

National security officials in the administration need to go back and read Peter Bergen’s Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden in which he recounts many aspects of bin Laden’s plan from the Islamic extremist uber-guru’s own words – which was to draw the US deeply into the Middle East, and by its presence — destabilize the governments in the region.