Joe Biden has approved sending troops to Somalia, reversing a Trump era withdrawal. Fox News. Hundreds of US special forces are being sent to the country to hunt al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate. The Pentagon had requested the ability to target the leadership of the organization. Donald Trump had pulled these troops out of Somalia, though they remained in the region. Al-Shabaab is a major regional threat and has as many as 10,000 fighters now.
My Comment:
In the big scheme of things this is a pretty minor news story. A few hundred troops in Somalia is a rounding error in the United States. These will be a special forces deployment, but even then it's not like this is going to cripple our ability to deploy troops to other countries should the need arise.
So why cover it? Because it's incredibly disappointing. One of Donald Trump's greatest triumphs was his foreign policy. Instead of keeping troops overseas forever he actually pulled our troops back home. It was a major part of his America First foreign policy and it was a good thing.
Biden has completely abandoned that. He did pull out of Afghanistan, and flubbed it horribly, but other than that he has greatly escalated our foreign policy on all levels. Ukraine is the biggest example but here comes Somalia, a country we had withdrawn from. It's like the bad old days under Obama and Bush where we constantly sent troops into new countries.
To be fair, al-Shabaab is a regional threat. They are a danger in Somalia and have launched attacks across northeastern Africa. Some of these attacks have been extremely brutal. I don't have a problem with attacking these people as they do deserve a hellfire missile to the face.
But do we really need to deploy special forces to Somalia? I don't think so. I am not sure if these are going to be people like Delta Force or the Navy Seals, going on hunter killer missions against al-Shabaab's leadership, or simply the Green Berets training local militias. Either way, I think most of what they want to accomplish in Somalia could be done via airstrikes and drones. I don't think we need troops on the ground.
And I do have to point out that al-Shabaab is not really that much of a threat to us. I do think that we don't want them to take over Somalia so they can fund wider operations, but I don't think that is likely under current circumstances. With that being the case I think that al-Shabaab would have remained a regional threat. It's not like ISIS where they actually could and did launch attacks across the world, including in the United States. Al-Shabaab is a minor player at best, even though they are one of the larger terror groups that remain at this point.
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