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Takes on Somalia

In reading about the US air strikes in Somalia, I tried to hit several sources. I particularly like to check international sources for news like this - for example, the BBC reports:

US air strikes in Somalia are aimed at al-Qaeda leaders in the region, and based on "credible intelligence", a Pentagon spokesman has said.

In its first official comment on the air strikes, the Pentagon said a raid was carried out on Sunday but declined to say if it had hit its target.

The US has long said al-Qaeda suspects linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa took refuge in Somalia.

and another BBC article:

By attacking Islamist fighters in Somalia the United States is trying to achieve two objectives.

It wants to intervene decisively on the side of the transitional government now back in Mogadishu and to get at three al-Qaeda suspects linked to bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and airliner in Kenya in 2002.

...The US sees the break-up of the Union of Islamic Courts as a good opportunity to try to remove what it regards as a serious threat from al-Qaeda in the region.

But the BBC is just a puppet for Tony Snow, as we all know, so I looked at some other sources for a potential differing point of view. Arab News:

US helicopter gunships attacked suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in Somalia yesterday...

US helicopter gunships attacked suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in Somalia yesterday, a Somali official said, a day after US Special Operations forces launched at least two air attacks against them in this restive Horn of Africa country. The attack helicopters were trying to kill Islamic extremists, said a Defense Ministry official. Earlier, Somalia’s president, Abdullahi Yusuf, had said the US was hunting suspects in the 1998 bombings of two US Embassies in East Africa and had his support.

Witnesses said 31 civilians, including a newly wed couple, were killed by the two helicopters yesterday. This claim and another of high civilian casualties in attacks on Monday could not be verified.

Okay. Some facts, some unverified claims that the US again blew up a wedding party or something like that. But later in that article is the criticism I was really looking for:

President Yusuf told journalists in Mogadishu that the US “has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.”

But others in the capital said the attacks would only increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country.
/
...The US airstrikes will not improve the long-term stability of the volatile East African country, the European Commission said yesterday.

“Any incident of this kind is not helpful in the long term,” said Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.

In the US, it is reported as killing terrorists. Europeans (except the British puppets) complain that it destabilized the region. Wait, wait... we're destabilizing Somalia. In my mind, a cartoon Frenchman turns to a caricature of a German and says "Ah, I miss ze old, stable Somalia. Stoopit Americawns!"

By far the most amusing anti-American take I could find was at the "progressive" site AlterNet. Follow the link. You know you want to. Your libertarian friends aren't looking, and it's healthy to expose yourself to the fringe. Here, I will give you just a taste:

The Bush administration, undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, has opened another battlefront in this oil-rich quarter of the Muslim world.

In all seriousness, I don't want to make light of the violence and bloodshed in eastern Africa. But I do want to point out that there has long been a complaint that the US involvement in Iraq is not a legitimate part of the global War on Terror, since the Iraqi government was not behind 9/11.

I always took that as a challenge to focus more on al-Qaeda, who is known to be heavily connected with the Islamic Courts Union, who have encouraged suicide attacks against Americans in eastern Africa. Osama bin Laden is reported to have encouraged the development of a fundamentalist Islamic state in Somalia - that sounds like a part of the global WoT to me, and pretty likely to involve people directly connected to 9/11.

Um... what more could a reasonable person ask for?