Money burns a hole in the pocket of some people. Power does the
same for some presidents. How else to explain President Barack
Obama’s creation of his own variant of Germany’s fabled Afrika
Korps, to serve in a small guerrilla war in Uganda?
It has been more than ten years since America was at
peace. If President Obama has his way it will be many more years
before U.S. troops stop fighting somewhere on earth.
After the demise of the Soviet Union left America as the
globe’s dominant power, Washington made war commonplace. Bombing,
invading, and occupying other nations became just another policy
initiative advanced by presidents on both sides of the partisan
aisle.
President George H.W. Bush had Panama and Iraq. President
Bill Clinton intervened in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. President
Obama adopted Afghanistan as his own, before adding Libya and now
Uganda.
These conflicts had surprisingly little to do with
American security. Only Afghanistan — the initial phase, targeting
al-Qaeda for 9/11 and punishing the Taliban regime for hosting
Osama bin Laden — was a defensive action. The first Gulf War
responded to aggression, but not against the U.S.
Most of the other interventions were militarized social
work, intervening where the U.S. had little or no plausible
security interest. Unfortunately, rarely did the humanitarian
consequences match the initial expectations.
Somalia and Haiti look little different than before
American military action. U.S. intervention in Kosovo and Iraq
sparked additional violence and human rights abuses — including
from Washington’s new allies. Bosnia and Kosovo remain unstable
quasi-states, held together only by allied pressure.
The nation-building exercise in Afghanistan has no end in
sight. U.S. and European officials insist that military withdrawal
in 2014 will be followed by even more intensive involvement — for
years or decades. The future of Libya, after NATO’s deceitful
campaign of regime change conducted in the name of humanitarianism,
is anyone’s guess.
Now there’s Uganda. President Obama has sent 100 military
personnel to Uganda to help destroy the so-called Lord’s Resistance
Army and kill or capture the LRA’s bizarre leader, Joseph Kony. The
president explained to Congress: “I believe that deploying these
U.S. Armed Forces furthers national security interests and foreign
policy.”
Fighting the LRA obviously does not promote American
security. To encourage American support, Uganda’s acting Foreign
Minister, Henry Okello Oryem, played the T card: “For 20 years, the
government Uganda has been pleading with our American and European
friends to help in the LRA problem, because these are international
terrorists.”
International terrorists?
In fact, that’s nonsense: the LRA (mischaracterized as “Christian”)
is a garden variety, if extra brutal, insurgent force. Whatever
Kony’s ambitions, striking the U.S. is not among them.
The group doesn’t even threaten the rule of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni. The LRA has committed more than its
share of murder and mayhem over the years, but has shrunk
dramatically in size and capability. The LRA now is estimated at
between 200 and 400 fighters, a tenth the number of just a few
years ago — and without any heavy weapons. They are enough to
unsettle a province, not destabilize a country, let alone a
continent.
What foreign policy interests are allegedly being served?
Some in Washington believe that there is nothing in the world which
is not a “vital interest” for America. But as the globe’s
superpower, the U.S. could — and should — remain aloof from most
of the tragic but common conflicts which dot the globe. Especially
with its problems at home, Washington should not become the
counter-insurgency force for the world.
Yet, the president explained, while U.S. personnel are
initially being deployed to Uganda, they are to “provide assistance
to regional forces” and could end up in the Central African
Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and/or South Sudan as
well. Columnist Michael Gerson
argued that “this is not an American
humanitarian intervention. It is American aid for an African
humanitarian intervention.”
However, Washington already has checked that box. The U.S.
has been providing military assistance to Uganda since 2008. This
summer Uganda shared with Burundi about $45 million worth of
American equipment, including four drones. In 2009 the U.S. Africa
Command helped the Ugandan military plan a series of strikes called
Operation Lightning Thunder. Washington also has provided aid to
militaries from Congo and South Sudan to combat the
LRA.
Alas, none of these steps have had much effect.
The latest move might still count as mere “aid” for
someone else’s intervention if the mission was only intelligence
sharing. But the administration is sending combat-ready forces to
the front line. The claim that they will only fight in self-defense
is meaningless: Americans will be on the spot aiding Ugandan forces
taking offensive action. The LRA could not help but see the U.S. as
just another enemy.
Ugandan President Museveni understands that Americans are
likely to end up in combat. With obvious embarrassment he protested
too much: “I cannot accept foreign troops to come and fight for us.
We have the capacity to fight our wars.” Museveni added: “Better to
call them U.S. personnel, not troops.”
As always, humanitarianism provides an emotional appeal
for going to war. But if Uganda is the standard, is there anywhere
American forces may not now be sent?
The LRA’s record is appalling, but the organization is a
shadow of its former self. Total deaths caused by the guerrillas
over the last three years are estimated to run around 2,500 to
3,000. Horrible though that is, such a casualty toll is a rounding
error in the conflicts that typically attract outside
involvement.
Humanitarian intervention usually is advanced to stop
genocide and mass murder. Even then there are persuasive arguments
against intervening, but at least the number of cases is few.
However, hundreds and thousands of people routinely die in civil
strife around the world. Now there no longer is any
meaningful threshold before Washington is ready to go to war. Max
Fisher of the Atlantic correctly
called this deployment “a small but
important shift in how, when, and why the U.S. uses military
force.”
Moreover, the mission has no obvious endpoint.
Administration officials have said the operation is expected to
last “months.” Objectives range from capturing Kony to building
local “capacity.” Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch even
has
advocated using U.S. forces “to arrest” Kony
and other LRA commanders for presentation to the International
Criminal Court.
Providing combat advisers also is a predictable precursor
to deploying troops, as in Vietnam. Thankfully the LRA is not the
Viet Cong, but administration officials told a congressional
hearing that the Americans troops will be “equipped for combat.”
Any casualties would create pressure for escalation, since, it
would be charged, Washington would lose credibility if it backed
down. One can imagine the immediate chorus for full-scale
war.
Worse, the fact that the Ugandan government has not been
able to defeat the LRA suggests that not all is well with
Washington’s latest military ally. Gerson endorsed aiding America’s
“friends,” but is Museveni really a friend?
The LRA grew out of years of civil war in Uganda: Acholi
tribesmen in the north distrusted Museveni, who displaced Idi Amin
as dictator in 1979 only to establish his own (admittedly softer)
dictatorship. Justine Labeja, who represented the LRA in
unsuccessful peace talks five years ago,
contended: “You can cut off the head of Kony
and kill the commanders, but that won’t help the people of northern
Uganda, marginalized over so many years.”
Perhaps the question should not be, why is there violent
opposition to the government, but why is there not more violent
opposition to the government? President Museveni was reelected
earlier this year in a dubious vote; Amnesty International cited
reports of “numerous instances of electoral violence and human
rights abuses.”
Amnesty added that “law enforcement officials committed
human rights violations, including unlawful killings and torture.”
Human Rights Watch criticized the illegal prosecution of civilians
in military courts. Worse, author Pepe Escobar reported:
“Museveni’s government (helped by Washington) has also perpetrated
horrendous massacres against civilians,” with at least 20,000
dead.
Even the latest State Department acknowledged:
“Serious human rights problems in the country included arbitrary
killings; vigilante killings; mob and ethnic violence; torture and
abuse of suspects and detainees; harsh prison conditions; official
impunity; arbitrary and politically motivated arrest and detention;
incommunicado and lengthy pretrial detention; restrictions on the
right to a fair trial and on freedom of speech, press, assembly,
and association; restrictions on opposition parties; electoral
irregularities; official corruption;” and more.
In any case, the LRA mission should not be viewed in
isolation. While one deployment of 100 men is but a blip for the
Pentagon spending machine, the military budget is made up of a
multitude of such interventions, big and small. This is the first
combat deployment in Africa since Somalia two decades ago and the
first by the U.S. Africa Command. In fact, in defending the current
military budget — roughly double the inflation-adjusted level of a
decade ago — the administration is warning that Washington might
not be able to intervene so often in Africa. Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta testified:
“[J]ust by virtue of the numbers that we’re dealing with, we will
probably have to reduce our presence elsewhere, presence perhaps in
Latin America, presence in Africa.”
The president’s new Afrika Korps demonstrates how the
“Defense” Department only rarely does defense these days. Most
money goes for offense —intervening hither and yon for reasons
having nothing to do with protecting America or Americans. With a
world filled with various guerrilla bands, separatist factions, and
terrorist groups, the potential for more wars is almost
infinite.
The world would be a better place if evil was eradicated.
But war has proved to be a very poor humanitarian tool. The Obama
administration should be pulling U.S. troops out of wars, not
intervening in more conflicts.
