Long War: I was pretty shaken up at the realization that Israel is now openly fighting alongside America in the Long War. What a sea change. Since the early days after 9/11, the US has had a policy of keeping religion out of the global conflict. US Generals were fired for saying things like,"My God is bigger than Allah." Not only had Israel been kept out of the conflict but African Christian countries like Ethiopia have contributed less than they could have because a religious dimension, an Islam vs. Christianity/Judaism dimension, was thought to generate stronger recruitment for the bad guys.
But then a couple months ago we saw Christian Ethopia invade Somalia and bad guy recruitment is way down because the Ethopian Army (along with the Kenyan and African Union armies) are killing so many bad guys that working for an Al-Qaeda franchisee in Africa is no longer a nice job. Young men have been signing up to serve as fighters for Al-Shabab for the paycheck, not for religious reasons. So the CIA might as well use a powerful local army if it is available.
South Africa does not contribute soldiers to the AU Somali effort for the same reason, it is a militantly Christian nation and therefore underutilized. South African soldiers are the best of the best. Probably we will see them fighting in the LW in the years ahead, maybe sooner.
Do you remember my blog that stated America's approval rating in Muslim majority countries does not go up or down based on the superpower's military actions in the Mideast? Even invading a Muslim country doesn't change the approval rating. It stays at a negative 90% or in the high 80s no matter what.
And with all this in mind the recent dispatch directly by President Obama of a Special Forces unit into central Africa dedicated to wiping out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) makes sense. This must have been CIA Director Petraeus' idea. The LRA is the strongest and most evil radical Christian militia in Africa. Although not as big as Al-Shabab these Christian bad guys are even more terrifying. They will chop a little kid's head off for spitting on the sidewalk.
If all the bad Christian militias are eliminated in Africa, then good Christian militia can fight for the CIA. And it looks like we will need to ramp up this new crusade quickly. Boko Haram is another African Al-Qaeda franchisee (in Nigeria) and it is 100% devoted to killing Christians. The Nigerian Long War battlefield is a pure Christian vs Muslim environment. And Al-Qaeda opened this part of the war up only recently, wanting to go after African Christians for some reason (probably to disrupt Nigeran oil exports). Al-Qaeda then is at least partially responsible for the CIA's new policy of inserting religion into the war.
It may turn out to be a strategic mistake on Al-Qaeda's part to create new enemies like this.
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