The White House confirmed Monday that they were sending \u201cabout\u201d four CV-22 Osprey aircraft and up to 150 special operations air force personnel to Uganda.\u00a0 The Osprey is the tilt rotor aircraft that flies like a plane but takes off and lands as a helicopter.\u00a0 The plane only costs about $70 million per plane.\u00a0 Their mission:\u00a0 assist local forces in fighting the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t recall us having troops in Uganda.\u00a0 I was wrong.<\/p>\n
We first sent 100 special-forces to Uganda in October, 2011.\u00a0 Obama announced the movement in a letter to Speaker Boehner.\u00a0 In the letter, Obama stated that even though the troops \u201care combat equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces.\u201d\u00a0 Obama stated that deploying these troops \u201cfurthers US national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution to ward counter-LRA efforts in Central Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems our own Congress voted on and passed the Lord\u2019s Army Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in 2010.<\/p>\n
The LRA leader, a Joseph Kony likes to forcibly induct young boys into this army.\u00a0 They rape, pillage, and burn, committing atrocities where ever they go.\u00a0 The mission then:\u00a0 \u201cremove from the battlefield, Joseph Kony.\u201d\u00a0 (That means capture or kill.)\u00a0 Now, we are sending another 150 troops and $280 million worth in planes.<\/p>\n
Anyone else see the mission creep that just happened?\u00a0 First, we were to assist local forces in fighting the LRA (leading from behind).\u00a0 Now we are to remove this guy from the battle field.\u00a0 We are not assisting anymore.<\/p>\n
This, sports fans, is how we get involved in foreign lands doing more than we can, with less than we should, without a clear mission or mandate from the host.\u00a0 This is how our Soldiers get killed and our resources spent without any return on investment.<\/p>\n
Can someone explain to me any serious strategic interest we have in Uganda?\u00a0 Sure they make coffee, cork, and export some precious metals.\u00a0 They are landlocked, so there is no port of use.\u00a0 Theirs is a fertile land and properly cultivated could solve many of Africa\u2019s starvation problems.\u00a0 I\u2019m not so shallow to believe that this is the underlying mission as set forth from this administration.\u00a0 I think he was looking for some low-hanging fruit and we\u2019ve just learned that this crop has spoiled on the vine.\u00a0 We have to dig deeper into the tree to find freshness.\u00a0 Barry is all too happy to do that\u2014with someone else\u2019s hide on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The White House confirmed Monday that they were sending \u201cabout\u201d four CV-22 Osprey aircraft and up to 150 special operations air force personnel to Uganda.\u00a0 The Osprey is the tilt rotor aircraft that flies like a plane but takes off and lands as a helicopter.\u00a0 The plane only costs about $70 million per plane.\u00a0 Their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}