Neocons Attack “al-Qaeda” in Somalia
Monday January 08th 2007, 10:27 pm

It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus “al-Qaeda” has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.

Earlier today, we learned a “U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia,” CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. “The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa,” apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. “The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia… where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.”

In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Sharia, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.

Here in America, they are called the Somali Islamists—granted, a simplistic term, but then we here in America like our simplistic terms—and thus the Somali version of a Muslim is lumped in with all the other Islamists, including those we are told are fascist, never mind European fascist movements of the early 20th century have nothing to do with Islam, and the word “Islamofascists” is little more than a meaningless and rather crude political epithet.

Of course, the word and nonsensical idea is strictly for domestic consumption, as evil Nazis are part of the firmly entrenched cultural landscape and it is apparently easy to associate Hitler and Nazism with people—indeed, entire cultures and religions—one does not like or understand (remember, “al-Qaeda” is a magnet for Hitler types like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or so the corporate media, with their neocon reading scripts in hand, tell us).

Last December, the popular ICU lost control after Ethiopia, with U.S. backing and encouragement, invaded and sent them packing to the southern-most tip of the country. According to CBS, the fleeing ICU are “al-Qaeda” to the man and, as such, fair game for an AC-130 gunship, sent from a U.S. airbase (at Camp Lemonier) in Dijibouti.

Of course, this is little more than a facile and threadbare excuse to kill Muslims, as Bush’s “minds” from the American Enterprise Institute are big on slaughtering large numbers of them on ice-thin pretext.

For instance, take the neocon Vance Serchuk, a scribbler at the Weekly Standard, who specializes in making excuses for the Ethiopia invasion, an affair wholly rigged by the United States. According to Serchuk and the neocons, the “Somalia problem came to metastasize over the past six months,” and Somalia is not simply “a failed state that could be occasionally exploited by terrorists,” but “an active and steadfast ally of the global jihadist movement,” thus the “Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa… at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti…. constitutes the U.S. military’s first post-9/11 outpost in sub-Saharan Africa.”

As Serchuk readily admits, this task force fits “squarely with what last year’s Quadrennial Defense Review” proposed, that is a “shifting emphasis” toward the use of “surrogates” in the war on terror, that is to say proxies will do the bidding of the neocons in the hundred or more year “war” planned for us and our children, and our children’s children.

Thus the attack against “al-Qaeda” may be considered yet another in a series of attacks against “Islamofascists” in Africa, as effete and bilious chicken hawks, hiding out in their comfy academic and think-tank lairs, are keen to chase Muslims hither and thither—or have National Guard kids from Nebraska chase them—as the neocon “clash of civilizations” plan dictates.

Oh, coincidentally, the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” that is to say after a suitable number of Muslims are killed and a requisite dictatorship takes hold, as the rule of Mohammed Siad Barre didn’t exactly work out as planned back in the 90s.

“Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001,” writes Larry Chin. “This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.”

“A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia,” notes F. William Engdahl. “Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.”

No doubt, as kissing cousins to the neolibs, who are primarily interested in “free trade” fire sales, the neocons have taken note of the potential for a Somalian oil and gas bonanza, especially with China eager to get in on the game with its insatiable thirst for petroleum. However, neocons are known primarily for their sociopathic hatred and fear of Muslims, be they Arab or African, and that is the immediate impetus behind their current fascination with the impoverish “failed state” (failed because it was ruled by Muslims) of Somalia.

“And even when the media are looking the other way, our enemies are not,” rants Vance Serchuk, AEI research fellow. “Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two, has already issued a recording calling Somalia ‘one of the crusader battlefields that are being launched by America … against Islam,’ a message that will no doubt resonate in the Muslim world.”

But of course, as the neocons believe, or rather expect us to believe, such messages, issued by documented intelligence assets, “resonate” in Islamic “failed states,” that is to say states inching up the neocon target list, as should be expected so long as these career criminals remain on the loose and are not forced to do the perp walk in orange jumpsuits.