Bush Administration got shamed by Ethiopia

Here we are, with the Bush Administration, they control the most mighty nation on the face of the planet and Bush is the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world... and yet we are still fighting Islamic extremists in a conflict that has gone on longer than World War II, the people we fight, they have no heavy weapons, they have no navy, they have no air force, and yet they don't show signs of weakening.

You take these same Extremists, you put them in Somalia, and then Ethiopian and Somali forces come in and clean the place out. I've heard reports that the fighters of the Islamic Courts Union are fleeing and even defecting.

Got to give it up for Ethiopia and the Somalia Transitional Government, they have done what the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world could not do.

But hey, bush has only done 2 invasions to date. Fucked up both, but I'm sure America will get better at invading other nations over time.

You sound similar to Bush* when he declared "Mission Accomplished"

But, it's interesting to note that these extremists were fleeing, they weren't staying and fighting.

And Ethiopia and it's allies have been very precise and careful, there have been no 'shock and awe' campaigns or anything like that.

I realize that what's going on over there won't be over in two weeks, but apparently it looks like they're doing something that our nation is not.

The extremists and those that felt compelled to join with them lined up to get shot. They got shot. They ran away.

Ethiopia's at the point where the US was a few weeks into the current Iraq war. Except instead of entering Mogadishu (|| to the US's entering Baghdad), Ethiopia had the local pseudo-government go in.

Now, remember that the original US plan was that they'd shear off the top couple of layers of the Iraq military and bureaucracy. Within a few months the draw-down of US forces could be well underway. This didn't happen: Both the Iraqi bureaucracy and the Iraqi military vanished. Some civil servants gradually trickled back in--not enough, to be sure--but a month after Baghdad fell the Iraqi army still hadn't returned to its barracks.

In Mogadishu there is no bureaucracy. The army was largely high-school-aged kids and people 'borrowed' from clans as a kind of devshirme: provide soldiers and you won't be punished for failing to be good subjects.

The only plus is that the 'official' Somali government knows the terrain and the people (this is also a minus, to be honest). They may, with the threat of Ethiopian firepower, be able to horse a deal with the clans in various parts of the country and work out some sort of arrangement that provides security and unity. I'm not betting that way.

The wild cards are the Arabs that came in over the last couple of weeks and the Eritreans. What Eritrea will do is anybody's guess; they want Badme, currently held by Ethiopia, and designated Eritrean by the UN folk. But the Arabs came to kill those opposing an Islamic state, and to die doing so; given how the people are now "collaborating" with the anti-Islamic folk (i.e., they gave up and aren't dying en masse opposing them), the Arabs probably assume that the blood of the common Somali is permitted--and that of the official government and the Ethiopians certainly is. It wouldn't take much chaos produced by good Muslims to make any solution worked out crumble; and if the imams continue to preach politics, the Islamists will be back.

Why people don't honor the Islamist imam's mixing of politics and religion and return the favor, I'll never know.

"...a conflict that has gone on longer than World War II..."

Hey, there's a difference between the length of WWII and the length of the American involvement in WWII!


-P