A strange thing happened the other day on the way to Kenya for some Al Qaeda types who were running for their lives from Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, having been expelled from that headquarters of Islamic butchers connected with Osama bin Laden (or whoever is running the be-headers these days). They looked overhead (at least very briefly) only to discover U.S. helicopter/C-130-gunship activity in their area, whereupon several of them were gunned down and never got to see the lights of Nairobi, after all. Ah…yes…Nairobi, where they bombed the U.S. Embassy in August 1998 and killed 224 innocent people.
Or…except for their misfortune, they might have continued on south to Tanzania, where they bombed the U.S. Embassy in its capital, Dar es Salaam, on that same glorious day in 1998, and in the process of both acts of treachery killed some 257 ordinary citizens and injured another 4,000 in the name of Allah. It was a day that has gone down as just another Al Qaeda/Islamic bloodletting, sort of like the 9/11 affair in New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Real beauties, these martyrs headed for the 72 virgins.
Whoa there! Did this U.S. activity constitute a military engagement in another country without either a by-your-leave from Senator “Buddy” Biden of the Foreign Affairs Committee or Ban Ki Moon, head honcho of the United Nations installed just a few days ago? Could it possibly have been like the Nixon incursion in Cambodia back in April 1970 that incurred the wrath of the righteous? Nixon said nothing until the invasion was already in progress. He was trying to save American lives.
Of course, John Kerry said he was in Cambodia at Christmas in 1968, only to discover that he actually didn’t know where he was but that he certainly wasn’t in Cambodia. This is what Kerry said on the floor of the Senate in 1986: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me." None of this was true, of course, and even the Washington Post wrote up the lie, notwithstanding how seared Kerry’s memory was.
Obviously, the U.S. action in Somalia was an incursion of sorts, but why no complaints from the democrats, who have made it abundantly clear lately that everyone should just sit around various tables in especially the Middle East, munch on dates and imbibe exotic beverages, and simply “talk out” a solution diplomatically to all the region’s problems, including the farther reaches of the horn of Africa? This is the position of John Kerry, the would-be president and former boat commander who was navigationally-challenged. Well…back in August 1998, according to CNN, President Clinton said, "there will be no sanctuary for terrorists," and said the U.S. strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a facility in Sudan are part of "a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism."
Prez Clinton had actually fired off a few missiles without asking Congress and didn’t seem to hit anything much in Afghanistan but did manage to blow up what appeared to be a medicine factory in Sudan. So…how could any democrat fault President Bush for actually chasing down and neutralizing permanently a bunch of Islamic terrorists? For that matter, next-door-neighbor Ethiopia had already invaded Somalia to help the Somali army rout the Moslems, who had taken over the capital of Mogadishu, and the United States – again without UN approval – was aiding another country in fighting the constantly burgeoning Islamic terrorist threat.
Somalia is officially Sunni Muslim territory, but apparently all Somalis – maybe not even half – don’t like the bloodletting the Muslims use in governing, that being about their only method. The United States doesn’t like the fact that Somalia is a haven for Al Qaeda operatives and the location of training camps for the terrorists. Ethiopia, about 40% Christian (orthodox) and 50% Muslim, is not content to let these murderers run things next door, so their vested interest in what the United States is doing, and vice-versa, is obvious. President Bush has indicated that Al Qaeda terrorists will be hunted down, no matter where they go, and killed or captured.
So…why aren’t the democrats, now in the driver’s seat (they think), berating President Bush and calling for everything from hearings to impeachment because of the Somali action? Simple: even they, as hypocritical as they are, realize that national security is the top priority and that no president of either party (as Clinton has done) means to go down in history as having failed in that vital area.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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