"Advisers" Sent to Uganda. Oh Joy.
Back on Friday President Obama sent Speaker John Boehner a letter.
And what may be our next war front has been unsealed.
You see, gentle reader, war teaches us geography. Seriously: Would any of our geographically illiterate schoolchildren ever know about Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, El Salvador, or Vietnam if we hadn't sent troops to fight and kill people?
But we're doing it very subtly this time. We're sending only 100 combat-armed troops as "advisers."
We started our war in Vietnam by sending advisers. After a while they started tagging along with the ARVN on combat missions, then started taking part in combat missions, then started leading combat missions. Then we sent combat formations, and finally half a million combat troops.
That's what the danger is, but we musn't fool ourselves. The Lord's Resistance Army, operating in Uganda and the African Great Lakes region are not a nationalist organization like the Viet Cong, or the Sandinistas, or the Bosnian Serb Army. They're a terrorist army of religious fanatics that impress children into their ranks and commit horrific atrocities. The advisers are there to help the local troops liquidate the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, and his chief lieutenants.
Whether they'll succeed or not remains to be seen. But the thing must be watched carefully to prevent a Vietnam-style mission creep that could drag us into yet another quagmire.
(It might also be edifying to see what religious organizations in the region are tacitly supporting the LRA with money sent to them by megachurches here in the USA.)
And what may be our next war front has been unsealed.
You see, gentle reader, war teaches us geography. Seriously: Would any of our geographically illiterate schoolchildren ever know about Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, El Salvador, or Vietnam if we hadn't sent troops to fight and kill people?
But we're doing it very subtly this time. We're sending only 100 combat-armed troops as "advisers."
We started our war in Vietnam by sending advisers. After a while they started tagging along with the ARVN on combat missions, then started taking part in combat missions, then started leading combat missions. Then we sent combat formations, and finally half a million combat troops.
That's what the danger is, but we musn't fool ourselves. The Lord's Resistance Army, operating in Uganda and the African Great Lakes region are not a nationalist organization like the Viet Cong, or the Sandinistas, or the Bosnian Serb Army. They're a terrorist army of religious fanatics that impress children into their ranks and commit horrific atrocities. The advisers are there to help the local troops liquidate the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, and his chief lieutenants.
Whether they'll succeed or not remains to be seen. But the thing must be watched carefully to prevent a Vietnam-style mission creep that could drag us into yet another quagmire.
(It might also be edifying to see what religious organizations in the region are tacitly supporting the LRA with money sent to them by megachurches here in the USA.)
posted by Walt at 8:29 AM
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