Saturday Posts

Afghanistan's Black Hawk Down incident.

U.S. withholding foreign aid from Somali Islamists

CIA Surge into Afghanistan

Photo of the Day

Child Soldiers

Somali Islamist insurgent fighters are seen at one of the bases vacated by Ethiopian troops in the capital Mogadishu. Ethiopian soldiers supporting Somalia's Western-backed interim government quit their main bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, witnesses said, prompting celebrations among many residents.
Str-Reuters

By way of CJ:

It’s one thing to accidentally kill a child in the exchange of gunfire, but to actually have one in your sights and to pull the trigger is not something I think any Soldier is prepared for. They don’t train us to have to kill kids, but that’s the position the terrorists are putting us in. This story just really broke my heart.

The US military said on Saturday its soldiers shot dead a 12-year-old boy who tried to attack a joint American and Iraqi patrol with a grenade in the tense northern city of Mosul.

“Coalition forces fired on two of three individuals positively identified as involved in the attack, killing one, who they later discovered was a 12-year-old boy,” Master Sergeant Michael Wetzel told AFP.

“We have every reason to believe that insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, but undoubtedly placing the children in harm’s way,” he said, following Thursday’s shooting.

Read the rest HERE.

Foreign Policy has an interesting article on "Child Soldiers":

In Afghanistan, a 14-year-old was responsible for the first killing of a NATO soldier -- likely just one of the estimated 8,000 child soldiers who do or have worked as part of the Taliban's forces.

Face to face with child soldiers in battle, Western military forces are often befuddled as to what to do. Should they engage, retreat, surrender, or attempt to disarm? The U.S. Army's war manual, for example, offers no guidance on rules of engagement. The British Army only recognized the problem after one of its patrols was captured by child RUF soldiers in Sierra Leone, having been hesitant to attack the under-15-year-olds. Britain later used pyrotechnics and loud explosions in that conflict to induce panic among the ill-trained youngsters, many of whom would simply run away.

~~~

The biggest challenge of all in ending child soldiering lies in the types of conflicts that employ the young. Children tend to be recruited in brutal, long-running civil wars, the kind that simmer for years or even decades. Unfortunately, these wars constitute the main form of armed conflict today. Until they stop, the recruitment of children never will.

From Inside Gitmo:

There are many articles and reports documenting the use of child soldierssome as young as just six years oldin Afghanistan and Iraq. Some selections covering this problem during the early days of the war in Afghanistan include Hannah Beech Farkhar, The Child Soldiers, Time, November 4, 2001; Rachel Stohl, Children on the Front Line: Child Soldiers in Afghanistan, Center for Defense Information, October 15, 2001; and David Rohde, 12 Year Olds Take Up Arms Against Taliban, New York Times, October 2, 2001. More recent articles of interest on this subject include Monte Morin, Taliban Recruiting Afghan Children for Suicide Bombings, Stars and Stripes, June 27, 2007; Marc Perelman, A New, Younger Jihadi Threat Emerges, Christian Science Monitor, December 28, 2007; Nick Owens, Child Soldiers Trained by the Taliban to Kill British Soldiers, Mirror.co.uk, February 8, 2008; and Juvenile Detainees Gain Second Chance through Dar Al-Hikmah from the Operation Iraqi Freedom Official Website of the Multi-National Force Iraq, August 17, 2007. Videos of child soldiers, including six-year-old Juma Gul, who had been tricked by the Taliban into wearing a suicide vest and instructed to throw himself at U.S. soldiers, can be found by typing child soldiers Taliban into the search box at YouTube.com.

Also read: Gitmo detainee supposedly 12 years old when captured and held for 6 years.

Somali Pirates Reacting in Self-Defense?!

Check out the "Blame America First" loons (no, they don't represent mainstream Americans, left or right):

That said, I checked some of the links at Memeorandum to get a feel for the blogospheric buzz, and many of those on the left aren't celebrating this event for the triumph of heroism that it is. Readers should check the comments at Think Progress, where some of the visitors there are scourging the United States, and suggesting that piracy is a legitimate response to Eurupe's "nuclear waste off the coast of Somalia." One of commenters blames the Bush administration:

We are always interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and always trying to stop any progressive movement or any form of good self-government.

A couple of the visitors at the post have linked to a piece at Crooks and Liars, "What the International Media Aren't Telling You About Somalia Pirates."

Read the whole post. Crooks and Liars links to an anti-capitalist essay at London's Independent, and then concludes with this flourish, "I wonder which principled member of our corporate media will point out that, in the big picture, the Somali pirates are acting in self-defense?"

Well, I wonder which principled member of our (leftist) media will point out that this is the exact same kind of logic that we saw after September 11, 2001, when leftists claimed Americans deserved the atttacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Indeed, some widely-supported anti-Americans suggested that the "chickens came home to roost" on 9/11.

Certainly, there is the germ of a point to be made:

With no coast guard to defend its shores, Somalis began complaining that vessels from Asia and Europe were dumping toxic waste in their waters and illegally scooping up red snapper, barracuda and tuna. The rampant illegal fishing began destroying the livelihoods of local fishermen.

According to a memo prepared last month by the staff of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Somali clans began resorting "to armed gangs in an attempt to stop the foreign vessels. Over time, these gangs have evolved into hijacking commercial vessels for ransom as an alternative source of income."

Civilian Casualties in Asymmetric Warfare

An Islamist insurgent holds his machine gun the stadium in Mogadishu, one of the bases vacated by Ethiopian troops January 14, 2009. Insurgents fired mortar bombs at Somalia's presidential palace on Wednesday, underlining fears of more bloodshed a day after Ethiopian troops supporting the government quit bases in Mogadishu. Witnesses said security forces including African Union (AU) peacekeepers guarding the hill-top palace compound in the coastal capital responded with their own volleys of artillery shells, shaking the city for several hours.

REUTERS/Ismail Taxta

In light of the uproar over civilian casualties incurred by the Palestinians in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, Jeffrey Goldberg is reminded of another conflict between a Democratic power and Islamic militants: The 1993 "Black Hawk Down" incident in which 18 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers were killed. This was followed by our "disproportionate force" in which a wide estimate of anywhere from 300-1500 Somalians were killed, many purportedly said to be civilian (some of whom were used as human shields and some acting as armed combatants, as well).

Mark Bowden, author of the book Black Hawk Down, provides some of his perspective on civilian deaths in asymmetric warfare:

Read more »