Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins
Forum Rules and Guidelines

NYT: Obama Sending 100 Armed Advisers to Africa to Help Fight Renegade Group

BRAVEONAWARPATH

By BRAVEONAWARPATH
in The Tailgate

Recommended Posts

BRAVEONAWARPATH

BRAVEONAWARPATH

Posted
Posted

Click on the link to read the rest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/africa/barack-obama-sending-100-armed-advisers-to-africa-to-help-fight-lords-resistance-army.html?_r=1&hp

President Obama said Friday that he had ordered the deployment of 100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity.

The deployment represents a muscular escalation of American military efforts to help fight the Lord’s Resistance Army, which originated as a Ugandan rebel force in the 1980s and morphed into a fearsome cult-like group of fighters. It is led by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet known for ordering village massacres, recruiting prepubescent soldiers, keeping harems of child brides and mutilating opponents.

“For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa,” Mr. Obama wrote in a letter to Congress announcing the military deployment. “The LRA continues to commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan that have a disproportionate impact on regional security.”

Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said his group had been advocating for such a deployment. Putting more skilled advisers in the field with the armed forces of these countries would be a significant improvement over the previous level of assistance, he said. “I would not suggest that U.S. forces should be fighting the LRA themselves,” he said, but “there are lot of things they can do with this kind of deployment that they weren’t able to do previously.”
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Special K

Special K

Posted
Posted

GOOD. The LRA has terrorized that region for too long already. Send in Seal Team 6.

And while we're over there, I wouldn't mind taking out Mugabe either.

Yes, he needs the Seal Team 6 treatment too.

---------- Post added October-14th-2011 at 06:55 PM ----------

Be nicer w/o bs restrictions....but maybe that is just diplomatic cover

Yeah...I suspect the latter is the case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bang

Bang

Posted
Posted
I think that this is a good move and he needs to be eliminated, but I'm a bit tired of the U.S.A. being the world police. Why can't China be the world police every once in a while?

you have to give a damn, and they don't

~Bang

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nonniey

nonniey

Posted
Posted

Not sure why some are gnashing their teeth (In the media not here) over this it is just a small advisory mission. Also don't understand why the President made such a big deal about the deployment either. We have advisors in several countries (with some consisting of even more personnel) essentially doing the same combat advising that these soldiers will do in Uganda and no big production was made about those missions (I bet most Americans aren't even aware we are doing them).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
twa

twa

Posted
Posted

the other locations are strategically important to the WOT and vital US interests....this is not (though it is suggested there is a quid pro quo deal for more assistance to US efforts in other regions)

advisory mission :ols:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Hubbs

Hubbs

Posted
Posted

I get the feeling that this is going to go along the lines of, "I advise you to tell me that you'll lie and say I was acting in 'self-defense' when I take out those ten guys around the machine gun a few hundred yards away."

This makes me apprehensive.

I agree with everyone here who's saying that the LRA is a horrible force. But this is how unintended consequences happen. I hope we don't try to do too much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Teller

Teller

Posted
Posted
And while we're over there, I wouldn't mind taking out Mugabe either.

I hate that **** with a passion. I hope his death is slow and miserable, and his eternity 50x worse than that.

Now that THAT's out of the way....

The new vicar (pastor in training) at our church is from Ethiopia. He is, quite simply, the most beautiful human being I have EVER met in my life. Not only is he already a world-class preacher, but he's just a terrific, genuine, amazing person.

I've gotten to spend a little time talking to him about a little bit of everything: Africa, faith, calling, all of it. And the stories he shares from his homeland are absolutely gut-wrenching. It's a shame that our news is so Americanized, so Westernized, that Africa is nothing but an afterthought -- if that. The horrors that plague that continent are such that if they were happening in Europe, it would cause WWIII without a second thought.

Maybe we've become immune to the pictures of starving kids. Maybe we don't care that kids are being sacrificed. I mean, they're just tribal Africans anyway, right? Who cares that this man we're so blessed to have in our church came from a place where he wasn't allowed to carry his Bible?

I know this sounds completely unlike me, but I have to chalk our ignorance and apathy toward an entire continent in despair up to racism. We care less because they are black Africans. Pains me like a mother ****er to say that, but I believe it. And it makes me sick to my stomach.

We look at them differently. Almost sub-human sometimes. Think I'm wrong? NatGeo will show you topless African women all day long. Not so much the ladies who frequent Europe's more liberal beaches.

I don't know what the solution is to such a massive crisis, and I don't pretend to. But I commend the president for doing SOMETHING. I hope and pray that this is only the beginning of our efforts there. And I hope in my lifetime that Africa will join the rest of the modern world. God bless them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
thebluefood

thebluefood

Posted
Posted
I get the feeling that this is going to go along the lines of, "I advise you to tell me that you'll lie and say I was acting in 'self-defense' when I take out those ten guys around the machine gun a few hundred yards away."

This makes me apprehensive.

I agree with everyone here who's saying that the LRA is a horrible force. But this is how unintended consequences happen. I hope we don't try to do too much.

I'm split on this. My brain says "I totally agree" but my heart says "**** that. Fill this bum with lead."

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jpyaks3

jpyaks3

Posted
Posted

Well Rush Limbaugh thinks its a bad idea

Obama Invades Uganda; Targets Christians

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That’s what the lingo means, “to help regional forces remove from the battlefield,” meaning capture or kill. [...]

Let's look at the Lord’s Resistance Army objectives. I have them here. “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people.” Now, again Lord’s Resistance Army is who Obama sent troops to help nations wipe out. The objectives of the Lord’s Resistance Army, what they’re trying to accomplish with their military action in these countries is the following: “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology.” Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting, or who are being fought and we are joining in the effort to remove them from the battlefield.

Personally this is one of the few international military actions that I can get fully behind. The Lords Resistance Army is pretty much cartoonish levels of evil and has been a destabilizing force in the region for quite some time. As long as we are wanted there (which I believe we are) I am all for working with the government to fight this group.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...