Hats off to Ralph Peters, not only for some good news on the war on terror, but also for some very entertaining reading. God, I just love Ralph Peters articles, dammit.


Apperenly, the Al Qeada types went and took the capital of Somalia, Mogidishu back in June of '06. Of course, being the jihadists that they are, they set up sharia law, declared democracy contrary to the teachings of Islam, set up numerous terrorist training camps, got the money laundering thing underway, fobade movies and watching the Word Cup, made celebrating New Year's a capital offense and in general started making Somalia a safe harbor for Jihadists everywhere to come to Somalia and export their ideals both in that country and neighboring countries.

WELL, wouldn't you know, the Ethiopians got sick and tired of Jihadists on their border causing a ruckus and decided to do something about it. Instead of the usual going to the U.N. and begging or relying of diplomacy and negotiation, they did things the old fashioned way. The Ethiopian army went on an ass kicking spree that was so sudden and quick that the Jihadist were fleeing out of Mogadishu then Kismao, a port city, so fast the news couldn't keep up with just how fast they were running.

To further put the kibosh on the Samoli Jihad thing, Kenya got into the act, sealed their border with Somalia and are acting as the anvil for the Ethiopian hammer that is killing Jihadist big wigs and their minions quietly out of sight of the U.N. and spineless world opinion that really doesn't approve of such actions. Not to mention that the U.S. loaned out an AC 130 to lend a bit of help here and there and probably some special forces to sweeten the pot as well.

Couple of lessons here.

First off, very swift decisive action does seem to rid countries of Al Qeada. The cowboy dimplomacy/preemptive strike thing works wonders, if one is willing to ignore the U.N., the Europeans and liberals everywhere who have an almost superstitious faith in negotiation and diplomacy and don't think violence solves problems.

While the Ethiopian army is about as welcome as dry rot by the Somalians, they don't like the Al Qeada types enough to SUPPORT the Jihadists against the Ethiopians. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no widespread support for Jihadists in Somalia.

While it may or may not have been the most prudent action by America to step into Afghanistan and Iraq and try to foment democracy, supporting countries that are willing to fight against our enemies yielded big dividends. The Al Qeada thugs responsible for the "Black Hawk Down" thing are now fleeing for their lives along the Kenyan border. Have I mentioned that Ahmandinejad's regime isn't all that popular with the younger types in Iran?


The Jihadists can be defeated. They lost Afghanistan, they're getting their asses handed to them in Iraq and now they just lost a very strategic location in Africa. A victory has been won for Western civilization in Africa, it can be won elsewhere as well, dammit.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/396gitqe.asp?pg=2

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070105/wl_nm/somalia_conflict_qaeda_dc

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01022007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/terrors_surprise_loss_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters. htm


http://www.nypost.com/seven/01102007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/terrorizing_terrorists_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters .htm

lol, the kenyan anvil to the eithiopian hammer? look out.

I'll take the good news. It's a welcome change from all the gloom & doom posters.

Yeah it's good news - I'm not really to keen about these extreme islamic states, and I like the way this war was done. I'm wonder what the deal was with Ethiopia to get them to invade. I'm not sure if the citizens in mogadishu are better off in terms of security, if the militias flares up again - but at least they get to watch football AND crew khat!

Oh, and darth: I'm pretty sure that it wasn't al-queda who did the black hawk down thing! Didn't you watch the movie?? ;)

It was al qeada backed somalis.

It was al qeada backed somalis.

Do you have a reference for this Trav?

Do you have a reference for this Trav?

I do. And as I always said, the withdraw from Mogadishu led directly to 9-11. That move showed us a paper tiger with no will. That is one of the main reasons we cantleave iraq now.

Links with al-Qaeda
There have been allegations that Osama bin Laden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden)'s Al-Qaeda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda) movement was involved in training and funding of Aidid's men. In his 2001 book, Holy War, Inc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_War%2C_Inc.), CNN reporter Peter Bergen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergen) interviewed Bin Laden who affirmed these allegations. According to Bergen, Bin Laden asserted that fighters affiliated with his group were involved in killing American troops in Somalia in 1993, a claim he had earlier made to the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Quds_Al-Arabi). According to CNN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN), al-Qaeda claimed to have supplied a large number of Soviet-designed rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs) to Aidid's fighters, and instructed them in ways to modify the RPGs to make them more effective against helicopters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter).[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)]
Four and one half years after the Battle of Mogadishu, in an interview in May 1998 [2] (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html), bin Laden disparaged the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia), after eighteen American soldiers were killed and two of them had their bodies dragged through the streets. Some interpret his statements [citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)] to mean that these events inspired his elaboration of later large-scale terrorist actions such as the first bombing of the World Trade Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_bombing), the bombing of U.S. embassies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_U.S._embassy_bombings) in Kenya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya) and Tanzania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania), Khobar Towers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khobar_Towers), USS Cole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole), and the 9/11 attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_attacks).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu#Links__with_al-Qaeda