Or: “A Failed Policy for A Failed State”

If anything will finally bring awareness to the flawed nature of US policy towards Somalia’s civil war, it will hopefully be the New York Times article earlier this week that detailed how our government has financially and logistically supported the arming, training, and use of child soldiers by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government in its fight against Al-Qaida linked Islamist militias that control most of the country.

In the words of the Times:

“According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.”

The paper also depicts an inadequate US government response:

“But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, ‘I don’t have a good answer for that.’”

What is more alarming, though, is that the aid to Somalia was approved despite the Somali government’s classification as a recruiter of child soldiers in a 2009 State Department report. This makes provision of military assistance illegal under the Child Soldier Prevention Act, an act that prohibits the United States from supporting militaries that use child soldiers.

The United States government funding a child soldier army? It’s symbolic of a broader policy that perpetuates civil war, gross human rights violations, and humanitarian tragedy. Somalia’s conflict has internally displaced 1.5 million people, made over 3 million dependent on outside humanitarian assistance, pushed thousands of children to the point of malnutrition, caused over 21,000 civilian deaths, and has led thousands of children to become child soldiers. And as if Somalia wasn’t bad enough, refugees can become victims of rape, torture, and detention once they reach countries like Kenya.

Amongst this, our government has been systematically restricting humanitarian aid to terrorist-linked Al Shabaab controlled areas (everything but a few blocks of Mogadishu), out of fear that some of the aid was being diverted to insurgents. But this policy has also cut off the desperate civilians who need the aid most. And yet our government has simultaneously increased the amount of armaments, training, and money provided to the Somali military, despite massive corruption that leads to many of those trained and armed deserting, defecting, or selling their weapons to the very terrorist-linked groups they’re supposed to be fighting.

There was a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing this past month on the Horn of Africa, which will hopefully put pressure on Congress and the Obama administration to account for a policy that is agitating a deepening civil war. If the best ideas we can come up with for fighting terrorism in a failed state like Somalia are using child soldiers, and arming terrorists but not feeding them, then perhaps its time to admit its really America that’s failing Somalia.

(Photo: Burundi peacekeepers head for Somalia. Flickr/US Army Africa)

This week, renowned educator Pedro Noguera is guest editor of The Nation‘s special education issue. In an editorial, he takes the Obama administration to task for “policies that, to the chagrin of many of [administration] supporters, have had far more in common with the previous administration than expected,” and offers a detailed look at what’s missing in education policy today:

Third, the need for change is clear, but history has shown that change in public education does not come easily or quickly. The Obama administration deserves credit for its willingness to provide funds to promote reform, but it is far too impressed with quick fixes like mayoral control of urban districts and charter schools. Over the past forty years studies have shown that education policy must be devised in concert with health reform, poverty alleviation initiatives and economic development in order to address the roots of failure in the most depressed areas. From crime and unemployment to teen pregnancy and even racism, education—or the lack thereof—is implicated in many of our nation’s social and economic problems. Education can be part of the solution to these and many other problems if reforms are designed and implemented in concert with key constituents—parents, teachers, local leaders and students—and with an understanding of how they must be coordinated with other aspects of social policy.

Health care reform is pretty much in the bag. President Barack Obama was triumphant in at least getting a bill passed, and folks on the left seem to have come to some consensus that hey, at least it’s better than nothing.

But over at The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild is having none of it. “Seems to me that Obama played us all for fools,” he writes. Rothschild muses that perhaps Obama only gave lip service to the public option so that progressives would back his reforms; the president never actually had any intention of including it in the final reform bill. Says Rothschild:

“If you’re a good progressive, and you wanted single-payer health care for all, or, second best, Medicare for All Who Want It, or third best, a robust public option, or fourth best, a paltry public option, now you’ve got nothing, nada, zippo.

Has it ever crossed your mind that this is the way President Obama wanted it to be?

That he tossed in the public option at the beginning only to get progressives on board, knowing full well that he was going to jettison the public option by the end?”

His evidence: Obama never insisted on a bill with a public option. He minimized its importance repeatedly in the media. Rahm Emanuel was in regular contact with Senator Max Baucus when Baucus dealt the first blow to the public option. And when Joe Lieberman threatened the reform process with his whining, Obama didn’t step in.

In the past week, two news stories arose that, despite their comedic value, served only to shave still more dignity from this country’s dignity-deficient conservative voice; The Obama Muslim-smearing that reared its ugly head before the election is still a right-wing trope — along with the right’s familiar tabloid circus fare.

Read the full story