The Obama Administration is sending 100 armed troops to central Africa, starting in Uganda, to serve as advisors to help hunt down the Lord’s Resistance Army. This isn’t our first effort to stop the LRA:
American efforts to combat the group also took place during the administration of President George W. Bush, which authorized the Pentagon to send a team of 17 counterterrorism advisers to train Ugandan troops and provided millions of dollars worth of aid, including fuel trucks, satellite phones and night-vision goggles, to the Ugandan Army. Those efforts scattered segments of the Lord’s Resistance Army in recent years; its remnants dispersed and regrouped in Uganda’s neighbors. In spring 2010, apparently desperate for new conscripts, Mr. Kony’s forces killed hundreds of villagers in the Congolese jungle and kidnapped hundreds more, according to witnesses interviewed at the time. Unlike the earlier effort, the 100 military advisers sent by Mr. Obama will be armed. They will be providing assistance and advice to their African hosts, Mr. Obama said, and “will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.”
Stephen L Taylor has more on the LRA and its ugly practices.
Nethead Jay
First off, as a giant Warren Zevon fan, awesome title.
Second, there’ll probably be some of the usual criticism whenever US troops are sent out like this, but in my book this is a good move. The LRA is a blight upon the region and all humanity and they’re also IMO a case where military force can actually do something about the situation. Good luck to them.
Yevgraf
That sonofabitch Van Owen, blew off Roland’s head…
One of my favorite songs EVAH!
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Good news. Now place your bets on which fRightWanker will go all skreeeee! Because OMG! President Mohammed Obama is persecuting Christians in Africa!!1
TomG
#3, Rush Limbaugh. Because he’s already done exactly that – I heard of this last night from Charles Johnson:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39293_Rush_Limbaugh_Defender_of_the_Lords_Resistance_Army
(EDIT – I see mistermix noticed that too. Great title, by the way, I’m also a Warren Zevon fan)
mistermix
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Limbaugh already went there
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/10/14/obama_invades_uganda_targets_christians
amk
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: limpaugh is already squealing like a pig he is.
Maude
@mistermix:
Limbaugh seems to be fading. He isn’t as popular as he was a long time ago.
Robin G.
I keep thinking of Clinton saying his biggest regret was not sending troops to Rwanda. If 100 armed soldiers makes a difference in stopping the LRA’s brutality, I’m all for it.
KCinDC
If this doesn’t mark Limbaugh’s jumping-the-shark moment, I really fear that at some point in the future he will be using his radio show to direct people to kill “liberals”, Rwanda-style. This is a new level of evil from him.
arguingwithsignposts
This seems to me like a no-brainer that military advisers would be armed when going into a volatile situation.
Mark S.
Where did my comment go? Oh well, FYWP.
JPL
@mistermix: Rush finally realizes that Christianity is not a peaceful religion. Why else would he be touting a terrorist organization. My thinking is that he is raising questions in order to make his audience think.
Okay, his audience doesn’t think but I couldn’t come up with a better explanation.
Sko Hayes
And I just heard Tom Coburn quoted on NPR endorsing the idea, and here’s an article about Inhofe also supporting it (uh oh, Rush!!):
http://newsok.com/article/3613600
MeDrewNotYou
@mistermix: Can’t say I’m surprised that Rush was first. I just skimmed and didn’t see any, but was there a mention of race? ‘Cuz you know someone’s going to go there. If no one does it by Monday, my money’s on Limbaugh to subtly hint that there are plenty of Europeans being slaughtered and mutilated that the president doesn’t care about.
Seriously, though, I’m always a bit wary and nervous over the use of the military, no matter how small. Is this something that we’ll be able help with? I don’t know much about the situation but it doesn’t seem we could make anything worse. Can we make it better, though?
Joseph Nobles
@KCinDC: It should be. But right at the end of the transcript, after all the bullshit about killing Christians and all, someone on his crack staff put down the cheeseburger long enough to type LRA into a search engine and they start telling Rush about all the torture and killing kids that the LRA has been doing, and Rush starts mumbling about just finding out about all this and they’re going to do their due diligence and all.
Inhofe supports it? Oh, damn, Rush really stepped into it.
Samara Morgan
@MeDrewNotYou: mistermix doesnt mention that the LRA is a radical CHRISTIAN terrorist organization either.
Is he ideological kin to Rush, like he is to Kain and the glibertarians?
Mark S.
@JPL:
Stop it! I can’t breathe I’m laughing so hard.
amk
otb’s stephen speculating
So what would be the good time to ‘involve’, stephen ?
MeDrewNotYou
@Samara Morgan: I just talked to my sister about them and she mentioned the LRA forces boys to rape their mothers. That’s not very Christian of them. Very Greek, but not very Christian.
The focus shouldn’t be on their being Christian, though. I think its more relevant that they’re (radical, like you mentioned) fundamentalists. And whenever fundamentalists get the chance, they do bad things and fuck shit up. Christian, Muslim, or Jew, they have a lot more in common that they’d ever admit.
Mino
Hum, it seems a lot of Uganda’s mainstream Christians are pretty sick. Remember the Kill the Gays Bill?
Linda Featheringill
Getting the US involved is unsettling for many reasons. One of the big questions is whether we can disengage at some point. Another question is whether we can actually do some good there.
And then there’s our history of sending military advisers to other places and really getting caught up in it all.
Scary.
On the other hand, there is Rwanda.
I am a professed pacifist and would have liked to have seen some other approach. But I will confess that I don’t see another effective intervention right now.
So I guess I’m conflicted but I support the effort.
amk
well, whatdayaknow. mccain, the eternal war monger, is whining too.
“But Mr McCain, a long-serving senator, former veteran and Mr Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential election, expressed “regret” that the president did not consult with Congress on the decision to sent troops to Uganda.
“I remember how past military deployments intended to further worthy humanitarian goals, whether it was peace-keeping operations in Lebanon or Somalia, resulted in tragedies that we never intended or expected,” Mr McCain said in a statement.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-africa-15317684
This from a bomb-bomb-iran crier as recently as last week.
Linda Featheringill
Warring against Christians? Christians have been fighting Christians for about 2000 years. Nothing new there.
Linda Featheringill
Inhofe supports Obama on something? Wow.
MeDrewNotYou
@Linda Featheringill: Everything from 33CE to The 30-Years War doesn’t count. Don’t you know that Papists aren’t real Christians?
(I’m not even sure about the war. I don’t think the fundies are big fans of Lutherans. A little too similar to the Catholics, doncha know.)
Chris
Considering that American evangelists were up to their eyeballs in the “kill the gays” law that Uganda tried to pass earlier this year, considering the financial ties of people like Pat Robertson to African dictators and considering that Africa is considered the number one battleground for Christian missionaries battling Islam…
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Christian Right already had a lovely relationship going with the LRA. No wonder they’d be pissed.
Samara Morgan
@MeDrewNotYou: wallah.
im just pointing out mixie neglected to MENTION the LRA are radical christians.
like he forgets to mention Kain is a LIBERTARIAN when he serially links him.
how much clearer can i make this?
WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.
Muslims didnt come here and cause the deaths of a million christians and make 4.5 million christian orphans.
Samara Morgan
@Chris: dont forget Warren and Saddleback supporting the kill the gays law.
Chris
@amk:
Notice that he’s talking about how humanitarian interventions can backfire and have unintended consequences and whatnot, which is really just the foreign policy variation of their “don’t help people, it’ll just make things worse!” mantra.
Bombing people while yelling about freedom and national security is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING!!!
Linda Featheringill
@MeDrewNotYou:
30 years war:
It took me a little time to understand why that was a marker but then I remembered the Protestant Reformation.
It’s early and I’m still working on my first cup of coffee. :-)
Besides, history doesn’t count to fundies.
jeff
@Samara Morgan:
It must get tiresome being the center of the universe all the time.
SteveinSC
@Linda Featheringill:
Intervention anyone? How quickly we leap onto a slippery slope. This is an African problem, best solved by Africans.
Linda Featheringill
OT but The Guardian is covering Occupy London and the police seem to have invaded the demonstration.
Samara Morgan
@MeDrewNotYou:
all Proselytizers in the View of the Real.
catholics == crusaders.
Samara Morgan
@jeff:
its a Sufi thing.
we are in the center…and the universe is infinite!
dance! the universe dances!
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
Somehow, the teabaggers NEVER GOT THIS, and I’m still a little stunned that no one anywhere in the media’s commented on it. They could show up with enough guns and ammo to conquer Grenada, they could link arms at the front of the townhall meetings and scream Gooper mantras over and over so that no one else could get a word in edgewise, and the worst that ever happened to them was Barney Frank comparing their brains to dining room tables.
And yet, they’ll go right on maintaining the mantra that they’re the poor oppressed downtrodden underclass, that Obama’s administration’s full of jackbooted thugs and, of course, that the media’s liberal.
nancydarling
This is a test. My comment will not load on mistermix’s catholic thread. I have not said anything bad that I am aware of. My comments loaded at John’s road thread earlier this AM.
amk
@nancydarling: you’re prolly in mm’s shitlist.
Svensker
WTF business do we have in Africa? Are we the world police now? Oops, SATSQ.
RalfW
Limpbaugh (courtesy of LGF, I could never actually visit Limp’s site)”
Well. If we haven’t heard of them, but they have the work “Lord” in their title, then they must be on the side of good, right?
I heard about the LRA many years ago, and they were terrible then. And terrible now: I was reminded yesterday, in very graphic terms in an NPR report, that says the child soldiers, as part of their “training” (cult-brainwash-abuse-terror), they have to go home and kill their parents.
It sounds very biblical, in that Old Testament, really f*cked up way humans used to treat each other (and still do in more places than I usually am aware).
It’s not hard to understand how, in that sort of context, it’s been easy for American “christians” to go to Uganda and whip up murderous anti-gay sentiment, too.
I hope Obama’s plan is well thought out. Unintended consequences are always on the table when military advisers are involved. But the LRA is concentrated, distilled evil, so I hope the mission works.
Omnes Omnibus
@Svensker: FWIW the LRA is a rather appalling group. Also, we have been supporting anti-LRA efforts for a number of years. This isn’t a new involvement.
soonergrunt
@Linda Featheringill: It involves killing brown people. SATSQ.
handsmile
The Obama administration has expanded coordination between the governments of Uganda and the US on combatting the Lord’s Resistance Army. In May, the president signed the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act”, a bill that was passed unanimously (!!) by both houses of Congress.
Since its formation in 1987, LRA’s operations were based primarily in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. With the establishment of the Republic of Southern Sudan in July, the world’s newest independent nation, the LRA has been more effectively cut off from its purported sponsor, the Sudanese government of Omar Ali Bashir. The deployment of US combat advisers to the Ugandan and Congolese militaries at this time should bolster their decades-long war against the brutal LRA insurgency.
From the linked NYT article, it is notable that the much-respected organization Human Rights Watch has been advocating for such a deployment.
And since she is both the target and targeter of much indignation here, it’s only fair to note that Samara Morgan is exactly right in describing the LRA (#16) as a “radical Christian terrorist organization.”
Amir Khalid
If any US administration is able and willing to think through its military involvements before sending in the troops, I reckon it’s this one. I don’t blame you guys at all for being worried, given America’s history of getting too involved in other people’s wars, but that thought should mitigate some of the concern.
@Samara Morgan:
You know, this wouldn’t need to be explained to anyone but you: MeDrewNotYou is not attacking Islam, or Muslims in general, in any way. He (you’re a he, MDNY, right?) is saying the evil that drives radical Christian militants is the same as that which drives radical religious militants of any affiliation, including Muslims like al-Qa’ida and the Taliban. And whatever you might say, there’s nothing defensible about those two gangs of murderous holy rollers.
As for mistermix not mentioning that the LRA are Christians, try following his link to the New York Times story. It has a hyperlink to the NYT archive of LRA stories. The headline on the first one you see describes the LRA as Christian rebels. Mistermix isn’t hiding that fact at all.
Should you reply to me, do try to avoid name-calling. It doesn’t upset me in the slightest, but it is needless and offensive to other commenters.
debg
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
It was Limbaugh, of course. Little Green Footballs has documented his know-nothing rant about Obama killing Christians in Uganda.
lawguy
You know I’m sure that this is entirely different from every other intervention we’ve done in the last oh, 50 years or so.
MeDrewNotYou
@Amir Khalid: 95% testosterone fueled! Grr! (The other 5% is the side that cares for and nurtures small, cute animals.)
ETA- Also, you nailed the point, but boasting about my masculinity takes precedence. ;]
Mike G
@amk:
This is from the dickwad who was itching to go to war against Russia a couple of years ago over Georgia.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@TomG: Shit. I had $50 down on Flush making jokes about Obama killing his relatives.
But hey, if that’s how he feels, who wants to join my newly formed organization – Jesus Christ’s Holy Republican Militia? Our objectives will be:
1. Kick Limpbaugh in the nuts.
2. Make him cry like a baby.
3. Victory mosh through his many homes.
He’ll have to approve because of the name.
Svensker
@Omnes Omnibus:
I get that LRA is appalling. I just wonder why we are spending money to fight there when our own people are hurting. Maybe we should — I just get very squantlish about shoving our military wherever and whenever we want. I am not a liberal interventionist.
Tom Hilton
@TomG:
@mistermix:
If I were the President, I would issue a statement condemning the Holocaust just to make Limbaugh take the side of the Nazis.
Tom Hilton
And on the merits of the thing, I think it’s consistent with the President’s overall foreign policy of taking action in cases where very limited (mulitlateral) force has the potential to achieve big positive results.
That works for me.
Jenny
@Svensker: Exactly. That’s why FDR should have been impeached and replaced with Charles Lindbergh for arming the British and China in 1940 and 1941, while America’s unemployment rate was still in the teens.
America First!
Misha
I’m sure it’s a happy coincidence that Uganda is preparing to begin oil production next year.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: Mistermix isn’t hiding that fact at all.
neither is he acknowledging it.
i just believe in truth in advertising.
i didnt think MeDrewnotyou was saying ANYTHING about muslims.
where did that come from?
and im calling you mufassir maftoon because it bugs you.
the juicers have no clue what means or what im referring to.
Samara Morgan
the juicers have no clue what means or what im referring to.
they have no idea of what tafsir is, or what a mufassir is.
but you do.
:)
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
All that exercise shifting the goalposts must make you big and strong.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: you are shifting goalposts not me.
im just complaining that mixie doesnt mention CHRISTIAN in context with the LRA on the front page here, and people have to read the link to see that.
I think that is intellectually dishonest, LOL!
where is his usual defense of “both sides do it”?
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
you see– that is where we differ. the Taliban are defending their country from invader/ocuppiers. al-Q are exacting revenge for western interventionist crap like Operation Ajax, and centuries of missionariism and colonialist imperialism. in a way their motivations are understandable to me.
and also how to end islamic terrorism is simple.
GTFO Big White Christian Bwana.
so while the anti-human TACTICS of are all three groups are synchronous, their goals are not.
what is the mission statement of LRA? anyone know?
oh i see, you are making the both sides do it argument.
THE
I don’t agree with that. I believe the Taliban have always been significantly a agent of Pakistan’s ISI. They are far less indigenous than you think. This is especially true outside the Pashtun areas.
Samara Morgan
@THE: wallah…..the Taliban are INDIGENOUS to AfPak.
afghanistan is one of those made up brit imperialist artificial countries. so is pakistan.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Then you don’t accept the Durand line but there is a lot more to Afghanistan and Pakistan than that.
I suspect if you go that route then Pakistan itself will not stand, because of ethnic divisions like Baluchistan etc.