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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Why was it there in the first place I wonder?
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Why was it there in the first place I wonder?
To surveil (and maybe to bomb) Islamic extremists that have a foothold in the region? The entire article is about why they’re there…
If you believe anything the U.S. has to say about fighting Islamic extremists after Iraq and Afghanistan…
Well that certainly seems like shitty counter insurgency. It doesn’t effect the material reasons that led to insurgents and creates more martyrs which increases recruitment and helps align the civilian population with the insurgency. The vietnamese knew this 50 years ago which is one of the reasons the US got its ass handed to it, has the US not learned it still?
Outside of the tactic not being effective though, why is the US interested in doing counterinsurgency in the region?
I would imagine western intelligence is very useful in fighting Isis. It certainly has been a huge boon for Ukraine in their war. As for why the west is interested in stopping the spread of Islamic extremism in Africa, foreign safe harbors for extremists often end up being training grounds for terrorists that attack the west.
Uh… Hate to break it to you, champ, but no one has trained, funded, and armed more Islamic extremists than the US. Maybe the US should GTFO of the places that it completely fucked up and let the sovereign nations that are impacted deal with it themselves. If those nations need help, maybe the US and Europe can start to return the trillions of dollars it stole from the continent.
I won’t disagree that the US has short-sightedly funded a lot of mujahideen fighters including recently some questionable groups in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re directly opposed to the Islamists in Saharan Africa. As for your suggestion that the US return the money they stole (despite the fact that they weren’t really involved in African colonialism), they account for over a fifth of all aid to Africa.
I won’t disagree that the US has short-sightedly funded a lot of mujahideen fighters including recently some questionable groups in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re directly opposed to the Islamists in Saharan Africa.
“This time it’s different, I swear, just give me one more undeclared forever war”
The US wasn’t involved in African colonialism? Aside from the fact that they profited immensely from the slave trade they were part of the Berlin Conference. Then followed all of the neocolonialism where they participated in ensuring European/American control over natural resources through coups, support for puppet regimes, etc.
As for aid to Africa, for every dollar of aid the US sends to Africa, more than twice that amount is extracted from Africa. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries
You can’t just diminish the US’s role in literally creating modern terrorism and just wave it off by saying they are definitely out there fighting the good fight. And you can’t say that because the US wasn’t part of the initial colonization of African that it doesn’t benefit from and participate in the theft of billions from the continent annually. You have to actually do the research into the history and present-day and at least try to understand the whole thing instead of just believing what Western PR firms say.
Yes, the US gives aid as part of the cover they need to extract more. The wealth the West is loaning to Africa is literally Africa wealth. Why should the West be charging massive amounts of interest and fees and attaching political strings to loans of money to Africa when that money is Africa’s in the first place? The idea that colonialism is over and the US isn’t part of it is just refusal to engage in the contemporary understanding of neocolonialism and how it looks, behaves, and how destructive it is.
Yes, the US is fighting ISIS but the US also gave rise to ISIS. The US should not be there fighting ISIS because whatever comes next will be worse. ISIS is already the 3rd generation of terrorism spawned through blow back against US policy, strategy, and tactics. You really want to see the 4th generation? Because that’s what’s going to emerge from the US fighting ISIS. The US doesn’t give a shit about the impact of terrorism in Africa and Asia. They fucking created it on purpose, and it has proven to be an incredibly lucrative phenomenon for them. They love being able to whip everyone into a blood frenzy with the topic.
And lest you think this was an old mistake from the before times: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/an-old-enemy-the-regressive-tendencies-of-american-foreign-policy/
The CIA is still working with extremists and terrorists - training, arming, and organizing them - for geostrategic aims, mostly fighting communism and securing oil and mineral profits.
So. Yeah. Fuck the US. They need to get the fuck out of Africa and they along with the rest of the North Atlantic need to begin the process of reparations. And that’s going to be in the trillions of dollars just for the last 50 years so they need to get started now as it will take decades for them to find ways to give back to Africa what they stole.
The US was a regional power with far less influence as compared to today when the Berlin Conference happened, and the result of their participation was Liberia. Conflating that with Europe’s scramble for Africa is disingenuous. Also, I don’t think the US is fighting the good fight, I think they do what every state actor does, which is act in their own self interest. China certainly isn’t working on their belt and road initiative because they think it’s a nice thing for the world. You won’t find me going to bat for the CIA or the corporate world.
I still think African states turning to Russia/Wagner and China’s sphere are in for a rude awakening.
Conflating that with Europe’s scramble for Africa is disingenuous
For every dollar the global South receives in aid, fourteen dollars are extracted in unequal exchange alone. The Berlin Conference is one historical event. The historical process is still ongoing and the US has taken the lead role in that process. That process being the continuous dominance of the world by European powers. The English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese were all competing for the lead role in the process, Spain and England became the top two contenders, they met in the Americas with the French, and then the English settlers won the battle for control of the most land, resources, and people. Those settlers established the USA and took the lead role in the process.
To claim that because the US was weaker at the exact time of the Berlin Conference is to distract from the historical process that the US benefits from and uses to extract trillions of dollars of wealth from the people they oppress as part of the continued oppression started by the Europeans during the Age of Discovery.
China certainly isn’t working on their belt and road initiative because they think it’s a nice thing for the world.
China’s theory of action is significantly different from the West’s. In the West, their theory of action is that dominance of the super majority of the world is in their self-interest, complete with extraction of hyperprofits from workers, mass murder, hard power projection, forced underdevelopment of the global South, and dumping all waste and externalities on the world’s majority. China’s theory of action is that a multi-polar world with far more even development and a focus on diplomacy, peace, autonomy of sovereign nations, and economic collaboration is in their self-interest. The BRI is absolutely in China’s self-interest, but it is not a Western imperialist project. Only the West thinks it is because the West projects all of its evils onto its opponents. The analysis has been done multiple times - China is not engaged in any debt trapping the way the West is.
I still think African states turning to Russia/Wagner and China’s sphere are in for a rude awakening.
I think you imagine that Russia/China are going to “do a Westy” on them. Think about what that says about the West. And when it doesn’t materialize, you can finally have that change of perspective you need.
Realize that the US (and many other European states), as well as Taiwan, opposed the end of apartheid in South Africa while Cuba and China supported the end of apartheid. South Africa didn’t even officially recognize China until Hong Kong was returned from the British, because the economic and political ties the British imposed on South Africa and the rest of its territory were so critical to the functioning of SA that losing ties to Hong Kong was unthinkable, so they recognized China in order to keep trading with the British financial infrastructure that the colonial power had installed on the island.
Nothing could be worse for Africa than what it suffered under the process of Western imperialism, including the historical period of US control of that process. 600 years of non-stop super exploitation, mass murder, subjugation, apartheid, indoctrination, forced underdevelopment, enslavement, environmental devastation, brutal collective punishment, systematized physical, psychological, and sexual torture… Whatever rude awakening you think they’ll get, it’ll be a dream compared to what the West did to it.
Probably to spread peace, love, and brotherhood to Islamic Extremists, or something like that.
Good point, wondering that too…
If you read the article it will tell you all about why the US military is there
The article doesn’t mention that Niger is also the prime supplier of Uranium for the French nuclear powerplants (and probably for more EU countries). Like it or not, that’s an important aspect of Western presence as well.
You’re right, it is no doubt a factor. I will say I think this Niger coup along with the other coups that have happened in the region over the past decade are France reaping what it sowed in terms of their post colonial foreign policy in the region. France urging respect for the democratic government in Niger falls flat when they’ve supported coups in the region in the not so distant past.
Absolutely agreed!
Oh. My. This is quite an interesting precedent. Let’s hope we start to see more of this. A new angle on dismantling the machine.
Pan-Africanism ftw
So when all the extremists that now can’t be monitored and controlled start commiting attacks in other parts of Africa, or sneak over the med to Europe to attack there, that’s a good thing because…?
Because the US is the worst extremist in the world, killing and torturing more people, more systematically, more continuously, and with munitions that poison the land enough to kill the children and the grandchildren who will be born there for decades later.
The US needs to be stopped.
So you’re more than happy for people to die in Africa and Europe as long as it’s done by islamic extremists, just as long as it’s not the US? Fucking bizarre mindset mate.
After the U.S. spent the last 20 years indiscriminately killing hundreds of thousands of people (at minimum!) throughout the world under the guise of fighting Islamic extremists, it’s disgusting to trot out concern for lives as a defense of continuing the same failed policies.
Considering the number of people the US and Europe have killed in Africa is orders of magnitude higher than the number of people killed by Islamic extremists, and considering the US and Europe trained, funded, and armed many of the Islamic extremists that are causing the harm you’re so worried about, I would say it’s not bizarre at all.
What’s bizarre is continuing to pretend that the solution to violent extremism is more violent power and military occupation by the imperialists of the continent when it was those imperialists who created the violent extremism in the first place.
Despite what they might tell you, the US has zero interest in fixing the problems they caused. The blowback is valuable to them. They keep the cycle of violence going and it keeps generating opportunities to project their power and generate ultraprofits.
