Headlines around the civilized world scream in outrage over the Boko Haram's kidnapping and murder of young people in Nigeria.
People, mostly - but hardly exclusively - blacks, are marching with signs reading #BringBackOurGirls .
Has anyone heard that
* ANY of the 57 Moslem nations in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned Boko Haram?
* ANY of the 25 nations of the African Unity (AU) offer to aid Nigeria in its effort to eliminate the Islamist Boko Haram? (The AU is the successor to the Organisation for African Unity {AU}).
Anyone? Now the U.S. - not a member of either the OIC or AU - is sending "personnel" to Nigeria to help its government. Do we have "personnel" in the Sudan where Islamists enslave and murder non-Islamists? Do we have "personnel" in Syria to side with the insurgents or government? Do we have "personnel" any more in Lebanon to protect that country from the spillover of Syria's civil war? As much as I wish for people such as those who make up the Boko Haram and similar organizations to be sent to an early death - and their bodies burned to deprive them of the promised 70 virgins - I don't want U.S. "personnel" on the ground. If the Muslims want to prove to the world that they are truly a peaceful people, let the OIC organize a military to attack the Islamists who sully the good name of Islam. If the Africans want to root out the Islamists from their midst, while perhaps recalling that it was Arab Muslim invaders who sold black Africans into slavery, let the AU states form a joint military to eliminate the Islamist scourge. The problem with U.S. "personnel" on the ground in Nigeria - or Sudan or anyplace else for that matter - is that we will once again be sucked into a Korea or Vietnam situation. In both cases, the U.S. sent only a few "personnel" to advise the local governments. Korea cost the U.S. 33,686 killed and 128,650 wounded; Vietnam's body county was 47,424 with 211,650 injured. (Source: United States military casualties of war) Apparently the U.S. has had an interest in Boko Haram going back at least to the time presidential want-to-be Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. According to a Daily Beast article dated May 7, 2014 and heded Hillary's State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists, Clinton "fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls." A May 8, 2014 article on the ThinkProgress site titled Here’s Why Hillary Clinton Resisted Designating Boko Haram As A Terrorist Organization apologizes for Clinton, reporting " there were multiple valid reasons for the State Department to disagree with the Justice Department and other agencies dealing with counterterrorism — such as the FBI and CIA — who urged State to place Boko Haram on the Foreign Terrorists Organization (FTO) list. “Designation is an important tool, it’s not the only tool,” a former State Department official told the Beast. “There are a lot of other things you can do in counterterrorism that doesn’t require a designation.” This includes boosting development aid to undercut the causes of unrest and deploying the FBI to assist in tracking down Boko Haram, both of which the U.S. actually did. The article continued: In addition, Clinton didn’t act in a vacuum to determine not to designate Boko Haram back in 2011. Scholars on Twitter who focus on the region, terrorism broadly, and Islamist groups in particular were quick to point out that not only were there few benefits and many possible costs to designation, many of them had argued against listing Boko Haram several years ago. In a letter to the State Department dated May 2012, twenty prominent African studies scholars wrote Clinton to implore her to hold off on placing Boko Haram on the FTO list. Acknowledging the violence Boko Haram had perpetrated, the academics argued that “an FTO designation would internationalize Boko Haram, legitimize abuses by Nigeria’s security services, limit the State Department’s latitude in shaping a long term strategy, and undermine the U.S. Government’s ability to receive effective independent analysis from the region.” I'm hearing echoes of Neville Chamberlain's Peace in our time speech, this time coming from the mouths of "prominent African studies scholars ." Back to the main questions: Has anyone heard any OIC member state condemning the Boko Haram? Has anyone heard any AU member state offer military support to Nigeria to eliminate the Boko Haram? Silence reigned.
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