Condemning Obama’s actions in Africa

The Obama administration’s rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips was not done for his well-being but was done to show that President Barack Obama was not a “wimp,” as well as to accustom the American people to the idea of a stronger American presence in Africa.

The United States has interfered in Somali politics for more than 30 years. The responsibility of Somali instability is due to American foreign policy, which supported the brutal dictatorship of Siad Barre in the 1980s.

This dictatorship was so dependent on American aid that when the United States cut it off, the entire country spiraled into anarchy and chaos. The senior Bush and Clinton administrations attempted to take advantage of this situation by utilizing a humanitarian pretense for invasion. This invasion ended in humiliation in 1992 during the “BlackHawk Down” incident where dead American troops were dragged through the streets.

Since then, the United States has played lethal games with different factions in Somalia. All this culminated in the American-backed Ethiopian Invasion in 2006, which killed 16,000 civilians and displaced another 1.2 million.

Moreover, European companies have taken advantage of this anarchy by dumping toxic and radioactive waste off the Somali coast, essentially killing the Somali fishing industry, driving fishermen to piracy in order to feed their families.
This piracy has been going on for years, and companies wrote off paying pirate ransoms as a cost of doing business. The pirates never killed anyone in their piracy, and the only time people were killed was when French commandos initiated raids to free hostages.

The Obama administration should find ways to alleviate the suffering of the Somali people rather than sowing more violence in the nation.

I believe this incident is an excuse to push forward AFRICOM, an American projection of power into Africa. This new American entity will be used to brutalize Africans for raw resources. We Americans must demand that our government stop thinking in these colonial terms because this thinking is destructive. Also, the American public must oppose an American military presence in Africa. Isn’t it enough that the Obama administration is continuing the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Edward Vasquez
IU employee