Dead Black Men that Don't Count
by C. L. Cook
As thousands gather in Los Angeles to mourn together the passing of an American music icon, television news stations are running extended coverage of the death of Michael Jackson, bumping scheduled stories.

 

One of those stories obscured by the untimely eclipse of the singular superstar is a matter of life and death too, but for many times more than one black man.

The Washington Post reports, a shipment of American weapons and ammunition arrived sometime this month in Mogadishu. The unspecified amount and nature of the materiel accompanies ten million dollars an anonymous Obama administration spokesperson says is meant to revive the Somali army and police force.

"A decision was made at the highest level to ensure the government does not fall and that everything is done to strengthen government security forces to counter the rebels."

 

As with the too numerous to mention Bush policies the Obama administration has renamed, reframed, and retained in one form or another, in Somalia too it seems the new president is prepared to assist the destruction of untold thousands of Somali civilians in a revival of a civil war that has consumed the troubled Horn of Africa nation since Bill Clinton's brief occupation of the capital in his first year in office in 1991. The George W. Bush administration built up the so-called "transitional" Somali government, putting them in power in 2006 following the Ethiopian spearheaded overthrow of the then-ruling Islamic Courts Union.

The ICU provided the first stable governance in Somalia since Clinton's retreat following the infamous 'Black Hawk Down' incident. The Courts gained power primarily due to Somali weariness of corruption, constant inter-tribal fighting, and the failure of the warlords to build an inclusive and viable economic framework for the country.

 

In 2001, the Bush administration began pitting factions against each other again, manipulating local ambitions in hopes of putting in place a pliant regime. The ascendancy of the Courts movement was arguably blowback, a reaction to CIA machinations, forcing direct military intervention. The humanitarian disaster this created counted for little media coverage. The toll Somali civilians payed at the hands of primarily Ethiopia's artillery and infantry is still not known. Nor were the numbers of fleeing refugees attacked, killed, and wounded by U.S. warplanes tallied.

Despite the destruction of the ICU, remnants are organized and fighting against the satrap in Mogadishu threatening again to oust Washington's operatives there. So fragile has their hold on power become, the government has formerly requested Ethiopian military "assistance" to fight again for its survival.  

There will be little else but the life and times of Michael Jackson on American TV news for the next few days, and while Jackson's death is sad, the greater tragedy is in Somalia; tragedy today assured, thanks to weapons passed at the president's and the United Nations Security Council's pleasure into the hands of a nation in the throes of a civil war, to explode the lives of thousands of innocents.

 

Just how many of those tragedies will be we'll likely never know, because they simply don't count.