November 27, 2007
Is Wired's David Axe Ignorant?
Any one see the problem with this analysis from Wired's David Axe?
As in Iraq, a pre-emptive war targeting potential terrorists has backfired. Thanks to the U.S. intervention, Somali fighters now have common cause with extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. Don’t believe me? A couple days ago a Somali journalist showed me an anonymous text-message death threat he’d received, apparently from the nationalist insurgent group Al Shabab.Al Shabab is not a "nationalist group". Wahdat al-Shabab is the "youth arm" of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). It is one of the founding organizations that came together to form the ICU.It was signed “Al Shabab = mujahideen.” The local guerrillas had morphed into international jihadists.
The ICU is now and has always been supported by al Qaeda. In fact, al Qaeda is probably diverting much of the resources once spent on Iraq to Somalia.
And if that doesn't convince you, the pro-ICU Somali website "al Mujaahid" is run by an administrator with the e-mail almujaahid.shabab@hotmail.com.
So, the al Shebab goons are now and have always been international jihadists.
The rest of Axe's analysis is flawed in that it does not compare the status quo of today with the pre-invasion status quo. Things are much worse today in Somalia. But had we let the Islamic Courts Union consolidate power as they were doing in the months before the Ethiopian invasion, instead of the present anarchy we would have a Taliban state in the Horn of Africa.
Remember what happened the last time we let the Taliban have a state? 9/11.
