Another War: Obama Orders US Troops into Central Africa to Hunt Kony

A warlord with a 300-strong army in central Africa is enough of a threat that the United States sends in the Special Forces? Apparently.

Sent by President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, the 100 U.S. soldiers are split up about 15 to 30 per base, bringing in American technology and experience to assist local forces.

Exact details on specific improvements that the American forces have brought to the table, however, are classified, to avoid giving Kony the ability to take countermeasures.

Probably to keep Congress out of the loop, too.

The mission to get Kony hasn’t been cheap.

Since 2008, the U.S. State Department has sent some $50 million in funds to support the Ugandan military’s logistics and non-lethal operations against the LRA, including contracting two transport helicopters to ferry troops and supplies. Another $500 million has been given over that time for the broader northern Uganda recovery effort in the aftermath of Kony’s presence there.

I observed a few years back that liberals tend to favor military action in inverse proportion to the US interests involved. For instance, while Saddam Hussein posed an obvious, longstanding regional threat to his neighbors and a global threat to the oil supply and price, liberals wanted out of Iraq and into Darfur, where the Sudan’s butchery seared the conscience but did not threaten the United States. That observation seems to apply to the Kony venture too. Kony is a bad man who deserves a very bad end, no doubt about that, but no worse on scale now than the average Mexican drug lord, and Mexico happens to be right next door to several US states. Its chaos as the drug gangs vie for control of parts or all of Mexico is far more of a direct threat to us than Kony. But the Obama administration sues Arizona for trying to secure its Mexican border, and sends the Special Forces off to Africa to hunt Kony. We didn’t even send in the military when Mexican drug thugs murdered American David Hartley on Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border.

After supporting military intervention in inverse logic, liberals are also the first to abandon overseas military ventures at the first sign of trouble, whether they backed those ventures at the outset or not. Something to keep in mind, if Kony turns into something similar to Somalia’s Aidid.