More US troops, aircraft to Africa
So, while the Obama Administration is busy dismantling the US military, they’ve also decided that they need more troops and aircraft in the hunt for African warlord Joseph Kony, says Fox News;
Early Monday, the White House confirmed a Washington Post report that the U.S. was sending “associated support personnel,” and a “limited number” of CV-22 Osprey aircraft to assist local forces in their long-running battle against Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Obama sent about 100 U.S. troops to help the African forces in 2011.
The administration did not specify how many troops and aircraft would be sent to Africa, but the Post reported that the president had ordered four Osprey aircraft and 150 Air Force special operations members and airmen to Uganda.
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Associated Press that the aircraft would be based in Uganda but will be used in LRA-affected areas of the Central African Republic, Congo and South Sudan to support the African Union’s regional task force.
There’s that lyin’ ass Caitlan Hayden again. When she was minister of disinformation in the Eikenberry Embassy in Afghanistan, she posted on this blog, in the comments, that the US wasn’t engaged in talks with the Taliban. But, it seems that we were, so if she told me that it’s raining, I’d have to look outside.
Category: Military issues
Well, stopping Kony is a worthy cause, I’ll give them that.
I had read enough about Kony to go visit Uganda myself. I was there in 2010, about 7 years after he was really out of the region and in the city of Gulu the effects of what his army did can still be felt. If there was ever a humanitarian cause for the US to get involved in for the sake of “doing the right thing” stopping Kony is it.
What US national interest is at stake here?
Uganda is now stable. South Sudan and CAR are also reasonably stable. (DRC isn’t, but it never really has been since the early 1960s.) Local forces are quite able to handle Kony. We can “make friends and influence people” in the region by assisting their governments in non-military ways.
The military is not the proper tool for providing humanitarian assistance. And I just don’t see that the US has enough interests in the region to warrant a military intervention. We didn’t intervene in Rwanda/Burundi a decade plus ago – IMO, correctly so. And we’re no worse off for that.
If US forces are to be ordered to go somewhere, conduct military operations, and potentially take casualties, those operations need to be in support of a US national interest – not a “feel good” cause. I don’t see that in sending people to chase Kony and his LRA in Africa.
This is a very evil man.
Find, fix and finish him.
Caitlin Hayden’s word has the credibility of Obama’s…not much at all…if any.
How long will it be before our troops are in a shooting war with the various jihadists lounging around Africa?
Pinto Nag…my thoughts (and worries) exactly. Obama seems hell bent on getting into another shooting war so he can look strong or something else he thinks he lacks, which is a hell of a lot. Lord help us to not get into a shooting war in Africa! Please!!!
I see too close a parallel to what happened in Central and South America. We need to stay OUT of Africa. We don’t have the intestinal fortitude to fight the conflict correctly, and the only thing that will happen is American soldiers will get caught in the middle of — and branded with — the atrocities committed by both sides.
HS Sophomore: I agree Kony is a bastard. But I’d like for someone to answer me one question: why is it in the US national interest to get involved in stopping him from being a bastard?
I just don’t see it. And I just don’t see how it’s worth the time and effort we’re devoting to what I essentially see as a “feel good” exercise that benefits US national interest very little or not at all.
HS Our only national interest in Africa is…Obama’s interest. No one else. He wants and HE believes needs to look stronger given the current Ukrainian fiasco and the Poland fiasco and the Afghanistan, kiss Karzai’s ass fiasco. He has hordes of ignorant, ass kissing, minions around him (including Kerry) telling him this crap and he is too stupid to know any different. He cannot think for himself and therefore, when surrounded by fools who don’t like our country any more than he does and don’t care when and where American blood gets shed, this kind of idiotic crap emerges as an “answer”. An answer to a question and problem that really hasn’t been asked of us or posed to us. It is Obama’s self generated bull shit that will cost American lives before it is over. Just my humble and admittedly jaded opinion.
By reinstating the stability in that region of the world we could develop a potential economic and political ally. It never happens that way, but we have done more for weaker reasons.
My thoughts exactly. Plus, it gives us something recent to talk about when France and such ilk bash US imperialism, interventionism, and hegemony on the international stage.
More important, is Kony even in the country anymore, and is he still alive? Some considerable intel gaps there for a guy who doesn’t seem to have a clear US interest involved…
He still operates in Uganda, but he’s thought to actually be basing out of the Central African Republic. However, they’ve been cooperative over there.
Not so, according to the people I know who’ve been there. He hasn’t been active in Uganda since 2005…
Below is info on the state of the LRA and Kony (correction- it’s 2006 not 2005): http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things Excerpt: “It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. But let’s get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality. First, the facts. Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic — where Kony himself is believed to be now. The Ugandan military has been pursuing the LRA since then but had little success (and several big screw-ups). In October last year, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 U.S. Army advisors to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date. Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years. Eerily, it is also the same number estimated for the total killed in the more than 20 years of conflict in Northern Uganda. As I wrote for FP in 2010, the small remaining LRA forces are still wreaking havoc and very hard to catch, but Northern Uganda has had tremendous recovery in the 6 years of peace since the LRA left. So why is “Uganda” trending on Twitter? Unfortunately, it looks like meddlesome details like where Kony actually is aren’t important enough for Invisible Children to make sure its audience understands. The video, narrated by Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, says its purpose is to intensify pressure on the U.S.… Read more »
Hondo, Sparks, et al-good points. However, Kony is not the Viet Minh. He’s a deranged lunatic with an estimated one hundred followers who are terrorizing disorganized and ineffectual resistance and civilians. Sending in a small force to train African armed forces to end his reign of terror, and maybe even getting into some small-scale direct action, is a good war to fight. We can greatly bolster the legitimate governments there, and generate some global goodwill by fighting a guy everyone everywhere agrees is evil and BSFC. All this without the threat of it becoming a large scale Vietnam-style escalation. Seems like a good trade. Of course, I won’t be the one fighting that war, so I guess there’s that.
HS If we had most any former President running this show I would feel differently. A small “training only” force sounds good if it can be held to that. However Obama’s middle name is escalation. When he gets in a bind in Africa that will be his first response. Not to rethink what we are doing there, did we accomplish it and is it time to leave. But his fear of looking bad in the world’s eyes will drive him to have more troops there before nightfall. Again, just my opinion based on past performance in most any arena of command he has dealt with. He is an “over reactionary” and they are dangerous. Past Presidents might have made bad decisions but it would not have been from a place of fear in their minds of the world’s opinion but of America’s best interests. It in fact would have been from a position of strength. Obama has no position of strength to speak of except how to make himself look the best…damn the cost to our nation or to our troop’s lives.
I picture him running away at the first major mishap like Clinton did in Somalia rather than escalating it personally. It’s pretty hard for me to see how you could escalate the hunt for what amounts to a murderous robber band to that level. The SF operators are competent; given the right tools and support, they’ll smoke Kony.
HS I pray with all my heart, for the sake of our troops, that you are right. I really do.
HS Sophomore: if Kony is a deranged lunatic with 100 or so followers, he’s no threat to US interests and can easily be handled by local forces. Us sending more forces there to chase him than he has not only wastes our time and resources (and risks our troops’ lives) – it also gives Kony and his followers status they don’t deserve.
We need to stay the hell out of conflicts where we can (1) accomplish nothing of value, or (2) where US national interests are not at stake. Anything else just pisses away lives and resources for no good reason.
True, he wouldn’t be a challenge for the US with its drones and highly drained cadres of elite warriors, but for the fifteen-thousand strong, under equipped and trained Ugandan army, it’s quite a challenge, especially in mountainous, rugged terrain. I think we have the power to do a lot of good there and win a lot of kudos in that part of the world and indeed globally. Maybe we shouldn’t do direct action, but sending support troops to help fight him and maybe loaning a couple drones seems reasonable to me. Just the way I see it.
Kony doesn’t have followers. He has an army of children that he kidnapped and raised.
It may not have a direct national interest in the traditional way we look at things, but that is a region that truly needs help. If we are going to pursue all these other foreign wars under other arguably false pretenses, why don’t we do this one to show that America really won’t tolerate people like Kony living in this world. In addition to helping to stabilize a region in the interests of developing a foreign ally.
Let’s also not forget that Kony rose through the ranks of the insurgency that was fighting Idi Amin for a while-who wasn’t such a nice guy himself: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~mbaba20h/classweb/worldpolitics/lra%20background.html Excerpt: “The roots of the current war between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Acholiland are entwined with the history of conflicts in Uganda and the rise to power of the National Resistance Army (currently called National Resistance Movement, NRM) which is under the current president, His Excellence Yoweri K. Museveni. It all started with the war in 1979 that overthrew Idi Amin who is known for having declared himself as the president of Uganda, for having massacred many Acholi and Langi people and for the economic war that expelled over 80,000 Asians from Uganda. This overthrow created a second term for Milton Obote who had taken refuge in Tanzania after being overthrown by Idi Amin. Obote had been aided by the Tanzanian army to fight Idi Amin. The bouncing back and forth of the country between the arms of power-hungry combatants, Milton Obote and Idi Amin created so much chaos and political turmoil in the 1970s and early 1980s which led to another famous guerilla war that was led by NRA under its leader Yoweri K. Museveni and other political parties. This war was referred to as the “bush war” where many lives were lost in the Luwero Triangle. In 1985, Obote was overthrown and Gen. Tito Okello came to power and he invited other political parties to join hands and establish a stronger nation. However the NRA did not participate in this agreement knowing that Okello was Obote’s former army commander. The Kenyan government under President Daniel Arap Moi had to intervene by making Okello and Museveni sign a peace agreement that was later on called the Nairobi agreement. This agreement was short lived as the National Resistance Army (NRA) went back to the bush and waged the guerilla war and in 1986 Okello was overthrown and Museveni came to power and became the president till today. The country experienced relative peace but there had… Read more »
Great points, Hondo, and I agree with all of them.
HS Sophomore: so, what I hear you say is Kony and his LRA is even less of a threat to the existing governments in the area than the Vietminh were in post-World War II Indochina. So tell me again why the US should care?
Hey, I understand Kony is an evil bastard. But there are a huge number of evil bastards in the world – and always will be. It’s not the job of the US military to right the world’s wrongs. Trying that is trying the impossible, and will squander lives and resources to no good end.
We should commit US forces only where the US has a clear national interest at stake. I simply don’t see a compelling US national interest justifying commitment of troops and resources to chase a couple of hundred thugs around African jungles and savannahs when local forces can do the same.
A gentleman many years ago came up with the money quote on this. The context was “do good” missions that don’t support US national interests – the specific example was US involvement in the Balkans. His observation was that “bleeding hearts often end up with bloody hands”.
Show me a real US national interest, and I can support military intervention. But I cannot support “sending in the troops” to play world policeman. That’s not their job.
y’know, George Bush created a hell of a lot of African good will (far more than probably any President before or since)by giving, pardon the phrasing, AIDS aid. Africans lose a hell of a lot more people to AIDS than Kony and the LRA will ever kill. THAT is the good war to fight, not playing “oh, damn, must be the US, all they know how to do is send troops” again. Not our time, not our fight.
Jonn,
I am laughing right now because I was a military liaison to the embassy while Caitlin and Eikenberry were there. I can tell you some stories about dysfunction that was going on in the embassy and with ISAF. Not surprised at all that she followed Rice to the NSC.
Going after Kony doesn’t make much sense because once he is gone some other petty warlord or jihadist will fill the power vacuum. It’s a cycle that has been going on in Africa for decades and will continue well after this. We won’t be buying any stability for this small commitment.
MT FAO Thank you. “Going after Kony doesn’t make much sense because once he is gone some other petty warlord or jihadist will fill the power vacuum.”
Absolutely right. Always happened that way and always will. Jihadists, regardless of ethnicity or nationality are the same. African war lords are as numerous as there are African tribes. You can’t get them all. African nations need to stand up to them and clean up their own nations first.
I would have to disagree. I’m not under any illusions about Kony’s death miraculously causing everybody in Africa to lay down their arms and sing kumbaya, but it isn’t a case of a struggle between regional warlords like Aidid in Somalia. He’s basically a deranged cult leader. Like most cults, there’s not really anybody out there who has a comparable ideology or who is going to take his place. If we take him out, nobody will replace him or morn his death. Also, the jihadist movement in Central Africa is SOMEWHAT present, it’s not very influential in that part of the world. He’s the Ugandan Charles Manson. We take him and his following out and we end his reign of terror. This one’s fairly simple.
HS I respect your disagreement. I only hope and pray it comes to fruition as you laid it out. Good points as well and I do hear you.
HS Sophomore,
I understand your point and I am not saying that taking Kony is a bad thing. I just have a cynical view about the timing of this given other geo-political problems going on in the world that will have a huge impact on our national interests. Keep in mind this is an escalation of an ongoing deployment of forces that have been trying to find and finish Kony for a while.
That said, keep up the critical thinking and analysis. I can think of a number of jobs where that will serve you very well. Not alot of folks in the US really pay attention to world events anymore and I applaud your commentary.
Thank you. Always good to hear the opinions of the people on the ground. And I’m with you on us over-stretching. Our manpower is entirely too small for the amount of international jobs we’ve undertaken.
Not on the ground any more as of January, but I stay aware of what is going on. Decided to retire and work on the next phase of my life out West.
MT FAO, I completely agree with you on targeting Kony not making much sense…
Wasn’t there a plane crash, due to enemy action, in Bor South Sudan recently? How did that turn out?
Four aircraft and 150 USAF special operations and support guys — I wonder how much tooth versus tail? If Mr. Kony likes his Role Playing Games, who covers those aircraft?
Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in uniform, UH1s had this problem with blade slap that made them easy to hear for miles in front of them. Obviously this is the brave new world and all such prehistoric issues are behind us but I’m wondering. How far away do you have to be before you cannot hear one of these fancy Osprey aircraft? Seems to me if that distance is X then the humping distance for those USAF bad boys is about 1.5X or 2X. If there there is no tac air, that is about the distance they have to hump for exfil — assuming that Mr. Kony continues to enjoy his Role Playing Games. I know that they are tough and all of that but things don’t always go as expected so who plays QRF in this picture? After all, it is about 1,000 miles to Djibouti.
I keep thinking about Mogadishu.
Richard…and thank you as well. I think the same thing…Mogadishu. No, I believe, the Osprey’s have a noise factor probably the same as a Huey in my (our) day. Especially when switching to VTOL which they will have to happen to do to off load troops. So you are correct in your point of, “it’s going to be one LONG ass hump boys!”. This just does not add up in my mind. I can’t see the point. They say “nature abhors a vacuum”, well so does power and control but to the Nth degree among thugs especially. Say they succeeded and took out Kony, his Colonels, Captains and Lieutenants…so what. I guarantee he already has a dozen or more “foot soldiers” who hate him and would already have cut his head off if not for fear. Take him out and one of them will step into the limelight. Only this new and improved version of Kony will be even more ruthless than Kony is now. Because he will have to show strength and fearlessness in the face of the recent American attacks. So he will just take it out on the next village or other folks he comes across to make and solidify his point and power to the people in the area and his own henchmen and the world. It has always been that way with thugs, be they Mexican Drug Cartels, African Jihadist Cartels or Central/South American Thug Cartels. “WE” cannot get them all. The world is an ugly place and in some places uglier than others. But it is high time Obama realized we are not the world’s police force. There’s something called the…what’s its name…oh yea right…The United Nations…yea that’s them! They are suppose the be the global defenders of innocent peoples. In fact they are suppose to be the ones who take the lead in this sort of condemnation and subsequent action. To be sure, if we do anything on our own, they will be the first to condemn us for it.
His popular support is next to nothing now; it’s just the hardcore ones left. Kill them, and I don’t see them rebuilding. It’s a calculated risk, though, I freely admit. It could happen the way you describe.
This guy is still a thing? Wasn’t he out of style by like, March 2012???
cannoncocker: IMO, he’s pretty damn irrelevant today. All the more reason to leave well enough alone and let the Ugandans take care of his evil azz.
Send them equipment, and maybe share some intel. Maybe train some of their forces. But I don’t think they need our troops running around their countryside to take care of things.
It’s not our fight, and frankly doesn’t matter at all to the US.
Hondo thank you. I actually took too many words to say what you did succinctly.
Could not possibly agree with you more, Hondo.
Kony2012 was a thing in 2012, that was 28 years after Kony started his thing. His thing being the kind of human atrocities that rank among the actions of Hitler and his ilk. A thing which is still going on today.
That thing is children with machine guns. Children razing villages to the ground. Teenagers raping mothers in front of their sons. Then forcing those sons to cut the heads off of his family before they are conscripted. It was only a 2012 thing to us because we live in America and aren’t affected by him.
Yes, Kony is a bastard. He’s just not “our” bastard, and that’s where the key defining point is. If he was “our” bastard we would be deploying troops, weapons, and equipment in support of his group, not against them. That has been the reality of US foreign policy since the ’50s.
Kony sounds like the small-scale version of the Tutsis and the Hutus. BJ Clinton couldn’t make a good case to get involved then, and Obama can’t make a good case to get involved now.
Adam: all you say about Kony above is true. He’s a vile and evil man.
However, there are many vile and evil men in the world. And Kony – as vile and evil as he is – is no threat to US national interests.
Threat to US national interests is the proper test for whether the US should commit military forces to a foreign situation. To be cold and hard about it: whether someone or some group is “evil” is irrelevant.
Why? The US military exists to defend the nation. That mission includes protecting US national interests abroad.
However, IMO that mission does not include playing international policeman. We’re fools if we take that path.
How about some of those drones? Wham! “Not him? Sorry.” Wham! “Not him? Sorry.” Wham! “Looks like him,but it’s not? Sorry.” Eventually some very smart types will do him themselves to stop the drones and dump his body at an embassy gate, C.O.D.
Eeben Barlow and a platoon of his guys would solve the problem.
Of course the UN would never stand for it. Barlow was/is a ‘mercenary’ (cue sinister music). Never mind that he and his colleagues have shut down gunmen/terrorists run amok before, and were told by the UN they had to stop and leave – because they were shutting down the wrong gunmen…the ones who were paying off certain UN officials.
http://eebenbarlowsmilitaryandsecurityblog.blogspot.com/
Would I be labeled a crazy cynic if I said I had a hunch that certain persons in the White House are hoping and praying for a very high-profile, fatal (to a couple of throw-away US Military Personnel) incident in Africa? So they can respond, look tough, collect a few rebel scalps, and divert national sub-80 IQ attention from Obamacare, Fast and Furious, DoD budget cuts (“They can’t be that bad, we showed those rebels in Africa, right?”), NSA domestic ops, Benghazi, the Crimean region/Ukraine/Putin, IRS targeting of political groups, the utter incompetence that is the most recent QDR, etc.?
Agreed with the point about mercenaries. The UN has shut down a good deal of effective and humane mercenary peacekeeping outfits like Executive Outcomes for reasons of political correctness while they themselves address nothing and are absurdly incompetent.
I remember watching a tv program on Barlow and his crew. Very effective. Too effective for some, as you say. I have thought of your scenario, before, and I think you are on to something, so; maybe I’m a crazy cynic, too?
Aside from all the talking about Kony I have a very bad feeling about this.
I know that the US has been building a lot of bases and such over there. I don’t know much about the whole situation except that I see no way on earth that this could end up good.
The military is stretched to the breaking point,s the ROE’s in Afghanistan are killing out troops and are a direct result of a CINC that doesn’t have a clue how to use the military because they simply don’t care.
I see Beirut, Mogadishu and Jimmy Carter written all over this mess…
If we know who he is and where he is, use a drone.
Problem solved…
And let’s be honest here, that Kony 2012 BS was trying to trick naive college kids into giving that Jason Russell guy their parents’ $$$. Seriously, the Invisible Children charity is a sham, with most of the money given to the organization not even making it’s way to the people it was supposedly set up to help-the victims themselves. Info on the organization: http://www.news.com.au/world/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923 Excerpt: “THE organisation which urged grassroots campaigners to help take down the African warlord Joseph Kony made nearly $20 million last year with its Kony 2012 campaign.And according to Invisible Children’s 2011-12 financial report, the company still has $12.6 million of campaign funds in its coffers after spending $6.7 million on expenses. Invisible Children created the half-hour film, which broke records with more than 100 million views in less than a week, in March last year to “make Kony famous”. Kony runs the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Africa and is responsible for massacres, mass rapes, and creating a legion of child soldiers. He has evaded capture for nearly three decades. The viral video encouraged people to spread the word, sign a pledge, buy a Kony 2012 action kit and donate to Invisible Children. Invisible Children released its financial report on Facebook between Christmas and New Year. It showed the organisation’s revenues more than doubled from the previous year, mostly thanks to the sale of “awareness products” such as Kony 2012 t-shirts and bracelets. Its overall revenue for the year, made up from various sources including the Kony 2012 campaign, was $31.94 million. Its total expenses were $15.98 million. Of that, the company spent 81.48 per cent on “media, mobilisation, protection and recovery”, according to the report. About 35 per cent was spent on “mobilisation”, about 9 per cent on media, 10 per cent on protection, and 27 per cent on recovery. The biggest increase in expenses was for mobilisation, which includes film tours and music tours, international events and advocacy. The report also shows that almost all revenue raised by Invisible Children in the 2012 financial year was unrestricted, that is the funds could be… Read more »
A young Paul (of the Ballsack) Wickre.
Indeed