Seeds of Wrath: Bush Sows New Crop of Extremists

Written by Chris Floyd

Sunday, 01 April 2007 00:14

Not that anyone cares or anything, but the Bush-backed "regime change" war in Somalia – another of those quickie "mission accomplished" jobs like Afghanistan and Iraq that somehow never quite ge

t accomplished after all – is still raging, with the worst fighting that the capital of Mogadishu has seen in 15 years. Or to put it another way, not since the last major American intervention into Somalia's affairs – a bipartisan Bush-Clinton operation – in which US troops, taking sides once again in a hydra-headed civil war after the collapse of the regime of an American-backed dicatator, managed to kill around 10,000 Somalis in a few weeks' time: a mass slaughter that was of course eclipsed by the death of 18 U.S. soldiers after their helicopters were shot down and some of their bodies despoiled by revengeful Somalis. (And speaking of revenge: AP notes that US forces killed almost 300 Somalis in just 12 hours following that "Black Hawk Down" incident.)

As AP reports on Saturday (via The State, in Columbia, South Carolina, and the Guardian):
Fighting raged for a third day in the Somali capital Saturday as government troops and their Ethiopian allies continued a major offensive to quash a growing insurgency by Islamic militants. Artillery fire and mortar shells rained down on the capital, sending residents fleeing some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu since the early 1990s.

On Friday, insurgents shot an Ethiopian helicopter gunship out of the sky and mortar shells slammed into a hospital, leaving corpses piled in the streets and wounding hundreds of civilians. According to an official count, 30 people have been killed since the offensive started Thursday. But the fighting was so severe and widespread in Mogadishu that bodies were not being picked up or even tallied, and residents said hundreds more were believed dead across the city of 1 million people.

The insurgents are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by U.S. special forces. Insurgents were firing mortars from residential areas of the city, and Ethiopian troops responded with barrages of heavy artillery. The attacks occurred across the flat seaside capital, and huge plumes of smoke rose into the air….

The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people have been killed since Thursday and more than 220 wounded, most of them civilians with bullet, grenade and other shrapnel wounds…The U.N.'s refugee agency said 58,000 people have fled violence in the Somali capital since the beginning of February...

"The victims are the civilians, only civilians are dying and getting wounded in this fighting,'' said Khadijo Farah Warsame, 45, a mother of seven..."All the commercial areas have closed, all the markets, all the stores, and now the people are looking for food. Where can we buy food?'' said Farah Hassan, a 50-year-old resident.

And what has been the outcome of this "regime change," besides the vastly increased level of human suffering? Why, destroying moderate influences and radicalizing younger Somalis into support of Islamic extremism, of course – the same outcome we have seen in Iraq, the same general template for the entire "War on Terror," that vast machine of loot and domination that creates more terrorism at every turn. As AP notes:

Islamic militants - who now dominate the insurgency - stockpiled thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition during the six months they controlled Mogadishu. The insurgency will likely last until that stockpile is depleted, or key leaders are killed.

The militants have long rejected any secular government and have sworn to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic emirate. Clan elders have tried to negotiate several cease-fires, but cannot control the young insurgents.

Isn't that wonderful? What a blessing for the American interests represented so ably by our president and his sterling team. Raising up a whole new generation of young, radicalized Islamic extremists – most of them raised in the hellholes of failed states shattered by America's "War on Terror" – can only mean boffo box office for profiteers of war, fear and terror for decades to come! Think of all the long green that "security consultants" like Rudy Giuliani will be raking in from the new crop of "asymmetricals" sown by Bush's wars. Not to mention the even greater profit margins of the weapons peddlers, the "military servicing" empires, the oil barons – and the body-bag manufacturers.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: there is no such thing as "bad news" for the Bush Terror Warriors. They can either reap the fruits of conquest in their regime changes – or simply make hay in the bloody aftermath of the blunt force trauma they inflict on millions of people. Either way, the money keeps rolling in. In office or out, the Bushists will keep on sowing the seeds of terrorism and revenge – but it's the rest of us who will reap the whirlwind.
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