AFRICOM Is DOA? Pt. 1

Amid reports that AFRICOM is for the time being staying in Stuttgart, Germany after a marginal presidential visit from George Bush to several African nations that found him confronted with often contentious discussions from his hosts about AFRICOM bases in their country, it is safe to propose a few questions from a good idea that has rapidly devolved into a fiasco:

1. How could the USG announce something as groundbreaking as AFRICOM and not have anything substantial in mind, let alone ready, beyond vague, conflicting ideas? Does this seem scatterbrained and counterproductive only to me?

2. Where was/is the careful consideration of Africa’s needs and opportunites with AFRICOM? At a time when the US looks less and less like the dispensible nation in Africa (indifference to the Congo, Dar Fur, Zimbabwe and Kenya, for starters), where are the programs to provide an assist on issues like weapons trafficking, insurgencies, endemic tribialism, internally displaced refugees, pandemic diseases and child soldiers, let alone any of the major crisis zones noted above?

3. At a time when the US is still not paying its UN dues (screwing over peacekeeping missions the world over, especially in Africa), is doing next to nothing to assist the far greater and more serious security issues in places like the Congo and Sudan and is far more interested in promoting charity than economic development, did anyone stop to think that a narrow focus on terrorism and Islamist groups would win many friends on the continent?

4. Above all else, what is the damn point? If its a military command, where are the peacekeepers for the ethnic cleansing in Kenya and the Congo (let alone the funding for such missions). If its a hybrid command, where the hell are the resources and the personnel for targeted efforts against some of the problems mentioned above like child soldiering and IDP security?

How is this not another pathetic example of our dysfunctional government, military and leadership?

P.S. Though Germany was not the greatest offender in the colonial crimes waged against Africans (ed.note: wait a minute didn’t the Germans commit a few outright variants on genocide against tribes in their colonies?), does anyone else miss the serious bad juju from basing a command for Africa in Europe?

Could we at least have it in Liberia for now? Or on a ship off the coast?

Tomorrow: What an AFRICOM that meant business would entail.