On October 26, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) forced a debate and vote on the U.S. military presence in Niger. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to keep our troops in that troubled country. There has been an increased focus on Africa due to widespread instability and a contest between superpowers for the continent. The presence of U.S. troops puts Americans in danger while failing to solve any of Africa’s problems.
During the Cold War era, the United States mostly relied on “soft power” in Africa, but U.S. military presence has continued to increase over the past 30 years. It is time to acknowledge that the U.S. military presence in Africa is a failure, bring our troops home, and replace violence with diplomacy and commerce. It is the right thing for America and the best thing for Africa.
When U.S. troops were first permanently deployed to Africa following 9/11 there were no known transnational terrorist organizations on the continent. The United States got a better excuse for its presence after the Islamic Courts Union took control of Somalia in 2006. The ICU were then expelled by an Ethiopian-led invasion, leaving in their wake an offshoot known as Al-Shabab which later pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. Following the Ethiopian invasion, the United Nations authorized the African Union Mission in Somalia [ANISOM] which the United States has supported since it began in 2007 with a large air and ground presence.
Radical Islamic terrorism did not spread across Africa in earnest until the 2010s, when it was greatly spurred by U.S. and NATO actions across North Africa and the Middle East. Most notably, when a NATO coalition overthrew Libya’s longtime leader Gadaffi in 2011 fighters he had been employing looted his armory and returned to their home countries, restarting dormant rebellions. The war in Syria began around the same time, and ultimately led to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda gaining a great deal of power and territory in the Middle East. This was simultaneous to the increasing popularity of drone warfare within the Obama Administration, who saw it as a “cheap” way to conduct counter-terror operations throughout the Muslim world. When they were chased out of some of their strongholds by airstrikes, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State expanded rapidly in West Africa, giving the United States yet more of a justification to increase its military presence in the region, most notably in Niger.
For a time, the presence of U.S. combat troops in West Africa was such a well-kept secret that when four U.S. servicemen were killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, multiple prominent legislators in charge of overseeing the U.S. military, including noted warmongers Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and the late Senator John McCain (R-AZ), acknowledged that they were not aware there were U.S. troops in the country. One exception to this was Representative Charlie Dent, who told CNN’s Chris Cuomo:
“With respect to Niger, I serve on the appropriations committee. I oversee military construction projects. We have a presence there. Not just there, but within that whole Lake Chad region, supporting local troops to support fight Boko Haram, support operations in West Africa and the operation in Mali. So we have all sorts of people in that region fighting a very dangerous foe, and ISIS in West Africa, especially.”
This is a stunning insight into the lack of thought the United States was putting into its military presence in Africa at the time—the civilian leadership in charge of overseeing military activity were unaware of the military’s presence in West Africa. The only oversight from Congress related to spending the money, which at the time included the construction of the Agadez drone base.
Persistent failure in Africa has not deterred U.S. policy makers from continuing the same strategies. Writing for The Intercept, journalist Nick Turse reports that in 2002 and 2003 the U.S. State Department reported just nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa, whereas in 2022 there were 2,737 in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger alone. The source for these statistics is the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, run by the U.S. Department of Defense which released a devastating report in early 2023 about security in the region following 20 years of heavy U.S. counter-terror involvement. The report states that terrorism fatalities across Africa rose by 48% in 2022 alone; the report notes the irony that terrorism has spiked since the Mali coup, for which poor security was used as a justification, but doesn’t mention the fact that there was almost no terrorism at all before the United States got involved in counter-terror operations in the region.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the training programs which are a key component of U.S. Africa policy have a proven track record of overthrowing the very governments they are meant to prop up. At least 12 coups by U.S. trained personnel have occurred since 2008, as of August 2023. A 2022 study showed that U.S. training makes soldiers more supportive of one-party states and less interested in preserving human rights. Following training, they see the value of reducing conflict within a state by taking sole power and also have been trained in skill sets conducive to conducting successful coups. Don’t worry though, AFRICOM commander General Michael Langley has full faith and confidence in our “curriculum” of telling them “please don’t do coups.”
Nowhere in Africa has U.S. troop presence achieved its goals. After 20 years, Africa has much more terrorism and fewer democratic governments. Both of those things are supposed to be key American objectives. The most important thing for the United States to have a productive future in Africa is to shed the Global War on Terror. Abukar Arman, a Somali geopolitical analyst and former diplomat, argued earlier this year that, “so long as U.S.’ policy toward Africa remains one driven by counter-terrorism and is implemented by AFRICOM drones that are accountable to no one, there will never be a sustainable strategic partnership with key countries such as Somalia.” He is correct that both the men running U.S. Africa policy and the machines which they use are drones and neither are producing desired results.
The U.S. Senate has shown that it intends to continue zombie policies by voting to stay in Niger and put our troops at unacceptable levels of risk without the potential of achieving any goals. The only wise path forward is to end our African terror war and engage with African nations as genuine partners in commerce and development.
The UN Human Rights Committee on Friday voiced its concerns over the United States’ continuing practice of using armed drones in lethal counterterrorism operations overseas and the country’s opaque criteria for such strikes.
“The Committee remains seriously concerned at the continuing practice of the State party of killings in extraterritorial counter-terrorism operations using armed drones,” the expert body said in its periodic report.
Additional concerns included “the lack of full and continuous transparency regarding the legal and policy criteria for drone strikes, the alleged possibility of variations through classified plans, as well as the lack of accountability for the loss of life and for other serious harm caused, particularly to civilians.”
Committee Vice-Chair Jose Manuel Santos Pais told a briefing in Geneva that the strikes had killed 1,500 civilians since January 2021, and no perpetrators have been brought to justice yet.
The US considers those extraterritorial counterterrorism operations to be part of its armed conflict with al-Qaeda and forces associated with the terrorist group, thus in line “with its inherent right of national self-defence,” the report said.
“[The Сommittee] reiterates its concern about the State party’s broad approach to the definition of ‘armed conflict,’ including an overbroad geographical and temporal scope,” it added.
The body also expressed its concerns that the US had made too few payments to affected civilians and their families in recent years.
The global elite plan to introduce a near-permanent “global state of emergency” by re-branding climate change as a “public health crisis” that is “worse than covid”.
This is not news. But the ongoing campaign has been accelerating in recent weeks.
I have written about this a lot over the last few years – see here and here and here. It started almost as soon as Covid started, and has been steadily progressing ever since, with some reports calling climate change “worse than covid”.
But if they keep talking about it, I’ll keep writing. And hopefully the awareness will spread.
Anyway, there’s a renewed push on the “climate = public health crisis” front. It started, as so many things do, with Bill Gates, stating in an interview with MSNBC in late September:
We have to put it all together; it’s not just climate’s over here and health is over here, the two are interacting
Since then there’s been a LOT of “climate change is a public health crisis” in the papers, likely part of the build-up to the UN’s COP28 summit later this year.
Following Gate’s lead, what was once a slow-burn propaganda drive has become a dash for the finish line, with that phrase repeated in articles all over the world as a feverish catechism.
It was an editorial in the October edition of the British Medical Journal that got the ball rolling, claiming to speak for over 200 medical journals, it declares it’s…
Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency”
Other publications get more specific, but the message is the same. Climate change is bad for the health of women, and children, and poor people, and Kenyans, and workers and…you get the idea.
And that’s all from just the last few days.
It’s not only the press, but governments and NGOs too. The “One Earth” non-profit reported, two days ago:
Both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have published (or updated) articles on their website in the last few days using variations on the phrase “The climate crisis is a health crisis.”
Local public health officials from as far apart as Western Australia and Arkansas are busy “discussing the health effects of climate change”
WHO data indicates 2 billion people lack safe drinking water and 600 million suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with children under 5 bearing 30% of foodborne fatalities. Climate stressors heighten waterborne and foodborne disease risks. In 2020, 770 million faced hunger, predominantly in Africa and Asia. Climate change affects food availability, quality and diversity, exacerbating food and nutrition crises.
Temperature and precipitation changes enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases. Without preventive actions, deaths from such diseases, currently over 700,000 annually, may rise. Climate change induces both immediate mental health issues, like anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and long-term disorders due to factors like displacement and disrupted social cohesion.
They are tying “climate change” to anyone who is malnourished, has intestinal parasites or contaminated drinking water. As well as anyone who dies from heat, cold, fire or flood. Even mental health disorders.
We’ve already seen the world’s first “diagnosis of climate change”. With parameters set this wide, we will see more in no time.
Just as a “Covid death” was anybody who died “of any cause after testing positive for Covid”, they are putting language in place that can redefine almost any illness or accident as a “climate change-related health issue”.
Two days ago, the Director General of the World Health Organization, the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and COP28 President co-authored an opinion piece for the Telegraph, headlined:
Climate change is one of our biggest health threats – humanity faces a staggering toll unless we act
The WHO Director went on to repeat the claim almost word for word on Twitter yesterday:
The climate crisis is a health crisis. Air pollution and extreme temperatures are causing an increase in diseases like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory. People are dying prematurely, and the most vulnerable are being hit the hardest. We must prioritize healing our…
Consider, the WHO is the only body on Earth empowered to declare a “pandemic”.
Consider, the official term is not “pandemic”, but rather “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.
Consider, a “public health emergency of international concern”, does not necessarily mean a disease.
It could mean, and I’m just spit-balling here, oh, I don’t know – maybe… climate change?
Consider, finally, that one clause in the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” would empower the WHO to declare a PHEIC on “precautionary principle” [my emphasis]:
Future declarations of a PHEIC by the WHO Director-General should be based on the precautionary principle where warranted
Essentially, once the new legislation is in place, the plan writes itself:
Put new laws in place enabling global “emergency measures” in the event of a future “public health emergency”
Declare climate change a public health emergency, or maybe a “potential public health emergency”
Activate emergency measures – like climate lockdowns – until climate change is “fixed”
See the end game here? It’s just that simple.
Oh, and we won’t be able to complain, because “climate denial” is going to be illegal. At least, if prominent climate activists like this one get their way.
That’s only a whisper in the background right now, but it will get louder after COP28, just wait.
Until then, like I said, I’m stuck here writing forever.
BUDAPEST – The world outside Europe does not share its position on the Ukraine conflict and does not understand European double standards applied to conflicts in other parts of the planet, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
“I can say that the world outside Europe is already really looking forward to the end of this war, because they do not understand many things. They do not understand, for example, how it can be that when a war is not in Europe, the European Union, looking down with fantastic moral superiority, calls on the parties to peace, advocates negotiations and an immediate end to violence. However, when there is a war in Europe, the European Union incites the conflict and supplies weapons, and anyone who talks about peace is immediately stigmatized,” Szijjarto said in an interview on Monday.
He also said that other countries do not understand why Europe “has made this conflict global” and why people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America have to pay for it due to growing inflation, energy prices and unstable food supplies.
Szijjarto added that Hungary’s position on the issue is treated with “great respect” outside the EU, which he was witnessing more than once during the UN General Assembly.
Hungary has consistently opposed sanctions on Russian energy resources and sending weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The Hungarian parliament issued a decree banning the supply of weapons to Ukraine from the country’s territory. Szijjarto explained that Budapest seeks to secure the western Ukrainian region of Zakarpatye, where ethnic Hungarians live, since the supply of weapons through its territory would become a military target for Russia. The country’s leadership has repeatedly emphasized that Hungary stands for the earliest possible start of peace negotiations.
France is recalling French Ambassador to Niger Sylvain Itte, all staff of the French Embassy, and all French troops in the West African country, President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday.
“The Ambassador in Niamey, as well as all staff of the embassy, will return to France in the coming weeks or months,” Macron told a French broadcaster.
He added that the military cooperation with Niger is “over” and French troops will leave the country by the end of the year.
“I spoke with President Mohamed Bazoum today and informed him that France has decided to recall its ambassador … We will also put an end to our military cooperation with the current Nigerien authorities because they are no longer aiming to fight terrorism. This is the end of this cooperation, it [the troops withdrawal] will be organized in the coming weeks or months. The troops will return in an organized manner before the end of the year,” Macron said.
Bazoum was deposed as president by his guard during a military takeover in July. France has refused to recognize the new government in Niger, initially ignoring their demands for French troops and the ambassador to leave the country.
Roughly 1,500 French troops are currently deployed in Niger. Despite the move, Macron said he still views Bazoum as the true leader of Niger.
Bazoum has called for his reinstatement, calling for help from the Economic Community of West African States, but two members of the block, Burkina Faso and Mali, signed a defensive pact with the military leadership of Niger and threatened to leave ECOWAS if it took military action against Niger.
The French embassy in Niamey and French military bases have been the focus of mass protests in the capital city.
The European Commission should buy the Ukrainian agricultural produce that the bloc says it doesn’t need and ship it to African countries, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said at the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
Western allies have repeatedly accused Moscow of trapping millions of tons of grain in Ukrainian Black Sea ports and of exacerbating a global food crisis, particularly across the African continent.
“Since the European Commission is wasting tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine… it can buy the grain that Ukraine wants to sell and EU countries don’t want [to buy] for reasons of competitiveness, and send it to Africa,” Lavrov told the UNGA.
According to Russia’s top diplomat, Ukrainian agricultural produce is “being supplied to European countries in abundance” but many of them don’t want to buy it, because “they have their own farmers and don’t want them to go bust due to competition.”
He also questioned the integrity of last year’s grain deal, pointing out during his speech at the UN that only 3% of the grain that was moved under this deal had reached the poorest countries in Africa.
In addition, Lavrov said that some 260,000 metric tons of Russian fertilizers have been impounded in EU ports since 2022 and that Moscow was ready to ship these fertilizers to African nations for free.
Russian fertilisers became the crucial point in talks over resuming the Black Sea Grain Deal that was clinched last year between Russia and Ukraine and brokered by the UN and Türkiye. The deal was aimed at allowing Ukraine to export grain from its ports to countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, in exchange for lifting Western sanctions that prevented Russian agricultural exports.
However, Moscow withdrew from the agreement in July, saying that the West was still making it impossible for Russia to ship food and fertilizer.
Lavrov said that the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Vershinin, is currently discussing the key issues related to the deal with UN representatives. He stressed also that Western states would be misleading UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres by saying that the grain deal was about to resume.
According to the minister, the deal can resume once Russia’s demands regarding its agricultural exports are fulfilled.
For instance, in 2018, Gaytandzhieva was expelled from the EU Parliament for confronting the US Assistant Secretary of Health over Pentagon-funded biolabs in 25 countries around the world. Her fascinating and groundbreaking work was smeared by the mainstream propaganda machine as “fake news”, although the high-ranking US official could’ve simply given a short explanation about the “benevolence” that’s taking place in these “biological research facilities”. Gaytandzhieva also broke the story about similar biolabs in Georgia, where she interviewed numerous locals who contracted “mysterious” diseases just because they were living in the vicinity of the “benevolent” facilities.
Namely, the DTRA has been involved in “modernizing and reconstructing” the National Veterinary Research Institute in Vom, central Nigeria. Why would a US Department of Defense (DoD) agency take part in supposedly “non-military” activities that could’ve easily been conducted by public health services? And yet, the involvement of DoD doesn’t stop there, as the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) has been conducting similar activities at the facilities of the Nigerian Defense Ministry, where they’ve been testing particularly dangerous pathogens without notifying local authorities, thereby exposing thousands of regular Nigerians (and possibly millions in the long term) to serious biohazard.
American military virologists in Nigeria are engaged in classified research that involves pathogens that cause tuberculosis, malaria, monkeypox and even COVID-19 and AIDS. Local sources indicate that tens of thousands of samples and genetic materials are being covertly transferred to other US-run biolabs, not only in Nigeria, but also abroad. Needless to say, the risk of causing yet another pandemic of global proportions because of such activities is substantial, even if the research conducted there is as “benevolent” as the Pentagon claims. The complete lack of transparency on the part of the US State Department, even toward the host country, only further reinforces this notion.
Frequent rotation of military personnel involved in the controversial “research” can only be described as an attempt to better conceal the nature of the Pentagon’s bioweapons program in Nigeria. What’s more, the recommendations of specialists from other US agencies, such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), actually lead to a worsening of the epidemiological situation in Nigeria, including an increase in cases of Ebola, Lassa, Crimean-Congo and similar types of hemorrhagic fever, as well as other dangerous diseases. Nigerian military personnel are probably the most vulnerable category, as the Pentagon exerts substantial control over Nigeria’s military and medical system.
Apart from DTRA, other US agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USAID (US Agency for International Development) have varying degrees of involvement. Under the pretext of “improving the sanitary and epidemiological situation” in Nigeria, the US government is exerting a tremendous amount of control over the country’s bioscientific infrastructure. The European Union is also cooperating with its US counterparts, although the troubled bloc disguises the involvement of its agencies by presenting it as a “humanitarian” effort. Unfortunately, Nigerian authorities are either unaware or are turning a blind eye to the fact that their citizens are effectively being used as guinea pigs.
These activities only serve to create conditions for conducting more effective dual-use “biological research”, the purposes of which are beneficial not only to the interests of the Pentagon, but also the so-called Big Pharma. All of the aforementioned pathogens (in addition to numerous others) are a deadly biohazard that endangers the lives of not only millions of Nigerians, but billions of people in Africa and around the world. The question is – cui bono? Well, it’s certainly not the Nigerian people (or any other for that matter). However, taking into account the astronomical profit margins of American and other Western pharmaceutical corporations, we get the idea of who does.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
After shunning COVID vaccines during the early pandemic response, Tanzania became a natural experiment for all-cause mortality rates. Compared to large U.S. states like Texas and California, Tanzania, with one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the world, succeeded in having one of the lowest all-cause mortality rates on earth, through the worst of the pandemic.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 14, 2023
Citing a public health emergency, New Mexico governor Michelle Grisham revoked the 2nd amendment rights of residents of her state this week. After citing that constitutional rights and oaths taken by public officials were not “absolute”, she was quickly condemned by some of the highest officials in the state.
The leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have signed a charter establishing an alliance of Sahel states to create a collective defense architecture, Mali’s interim president for the transitional period, Assimi Goita, said on Saturday.
“I have signed today with the leaders of Burkina Faso and Niger the Liptako Gourma Charter, establishing the Alliance of Sahel States to create an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of our people,” Goita said on X.
An attack on the sovereignty or territorial integrity of one or more parties to the charter will be regarded as aggression against the other parties and will require their assistance, including the use of military force, the document read.
The parties also commit to fighting terrorism and organized crime on the territory of Sahel states, the charter added.
Burkina Faso has notified France of the expulsion of the embassy’s military attaché for “subversive activities,” weeks after Niger ordered the European country’s ambassador to leave.
In a letter seen by AFP on Friday, Burkina Faso’s foreign ministry warned that attaché Emmanuel Pasquier and his team had two weeks to leave the Sahel nation where military leaders last year twice toppled pro-France governments.
The ministry letter added that the French military mission in Ouagadougou would be closed.
France pulled out troops from its former colony in the face of mounting hostility after Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power in September 2022.
France’s foreign ministry rejected the accusation.
“The accusation of subversive activities is obviously fanciful,” a foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP in Paris.
After the September coup, France recalled its ambassador from Ouagadougou and has not replaced the envoy. Burkina Faso is also unlikely to let the envoy come back.
Burkina Faso’s military leaders have suspended the French TV outlets LCI and France24 as well as Radio France Internationale (RFI) and expelled the correspondents of the French newspapers Liberation and Le Monde over their “subversive activities.”
Burkina Faso’s military chief Traore last week gave an interview saying Burkina was not “the enemy of the French people” but of the policies of its government.
“We have to accept seeing each other as equals… and accept an overhaul of our entire cooperation,” he said on state television.
Anger within the armed forces led to a coup on January 24, 2022, toppling pro-France president Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
On September 30, Kabore’s nemesis, Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, was himself overthrown by the 34-year-old Traore, who has promised a return to democracy with presidential elections by July 2024.
Traore in July met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg and followed up with talks in August with a Russian delegation on development and military cooperation.
Foreign Minister Olivia Rouamba on Monday said Burkina needed to “strengthen bilateral cooperation” with Iran and President Ebrahim Raeisi.
Meanwhile, Niger’s military leaders gave the French ambassador a 48-hour ultimatum to leave the country in August, but French President Emmanuel Macron refused to comply or to recognize the legitimacy of the military rulers.
At the end of August, the military rulers revoked the diplomatic immunity of the ambassador and ordered the police to expel him from the country.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a presidential “finding” under the National Security Act authorizing the CIA to conduct a nonlethal campaign to support democratic resistance to the communist Dergs and the CIA budgeted 500,000 dollars a year to help the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Alliance conduct a worldwide propaganda war against the Marxist government. This group was led by wealthy Ethiopian landowners who had fled their nation after the communists seized their property.
Reagan labeled Ethiopia a threat to the world, and was one of four nations he targeted for regime change. Reagan wanted to arm Ethiopian “freedom fighters” as part of the “Reagan Doctrine,” a concerted effort to roll back Soviet gains in the Third World, but the US Congress refused to provide funds. As a result, the CIA raised funds itself.
It is unknown if the CIA worked with its friends in Hollywood to create the 1985 “We Are the World – Live Aid” fundraiser, or just diverted the money flow. Most evidence comes from a March 3, 2010 report by Martin Plaut of the BBC that published evidence millions of dollars worth of aid for the Ethiopian famine were diverted to buy weapons by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, a CIA backed group trying to overthrow the Ethiopian communist government. Rebel soldiers said they posed as grain merchants to receive cash they used to buy arms. The report cited a declassified CIA document saying aid was “almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.” One rebel leader estimated 95 of the 100 million dollars raised by the charity effort was used to buy weaponry.
“Ethiopian Famine Aid Spent on Weapons”; Martin Plaut, BBC; March 3, 2010; this is the “corrected” article from months later after the BBC editorial board reacted to threats for printing the truth; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/853…
The July military coup in the west African country of Niger has once again brought attention to the fact that the US government runs a global military empire that serves Washington’s special interests, and not the national interest.
Before the coup made news headlines, most Americans – including many serving in Congress – had no idea the US government maintains more than 1,000 troops stationed on several US bases in Niger. But it’s even worse than that. A recent report in The Intercept suggests the Pentagon repeatedly misled Congress about the extent and the cost of the US presence in Niger.
According to The Intercept, “in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of US Africa Command described Air Base 201 (in Niger) as ‘minimal’ and ‘low cost.’” In fact the US government has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on the base since construction began in 2016.
So when did Congress declare war so as to legalize US military operations in Niger? They didn’t. But as Kelley Vlahos writes in Responsible Statecraft, US troops have been “training” the military in Niger since 2013 and the US government has constructed a number of military bases to “fight terrorism” in the country and region.
Does that mean that the Pentagon is operating in Niger under the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) meant to track down those who attacked the US on 9/11? It’s a good question and thankfully one being asked by Sen. Rand Paul in a recent letter sent to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Senator Paul first pointed out in the letter, “the Administration’s limitless interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF and frequent use of Title 10 authorities results in military operations abroad conducted with little Congressional oversight and even less public scrutiny.” Such actions “undermine our Constitution,” he writes as he asks, “in how many countries are US forces conducting operations authorized by the 2001 AUMF.”
Ironically – or maybe not – one of the coup leaders in NIger had been trained by the Pentagon at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. What is the US government training foreign military officers to do, exactly? Overthrow their own governments?
Whatever the case, it appears the coup government in Niger may be seeking a withdrawal of foreign military on its soil. Mass protests against French military presence has led the French government to begin talks with the coup government on withdrawal. There are rumors that the coup government may next request US troops to leave the country.
We should pre-empt their possible request by withdrawing all US troops immediately from Niger (and the rest of Africa) and closing all military bases. The claim that the US government is fighting terrorism in the area is doubtful. After all, in both Libya and in Syria the US government backed terrorist groups against governments it sought to overthrow. President Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan famously wrote to his then-boss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 that, “in Syria, al-Qaeda is on our side.”
Congress must step up and exercise its oversight authority to end the counter-productive US military presence in Africa. Our military empire is bankrupting us and turning the rest of the world against us.
The Kevin Barrett-Noam Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective
Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 14, 2016
… Chomsky in discouraging skeptical investigation of 9/11 reveals himself to be a Trojan horse that has succeeded in subverting the Left from within. … Read full article
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