Sunday news: here's your sign edition

Ah, Sunday, that joyous day when we celebrate all that is special to us.  When we relax in a hammock sipping lemonade.  When the air temperature is hot enough to melt the skin off a tomato.  Here's how we shall mark this splendid occasion.  

• Health insurance companies:  the root of all that is evil.  And I should know, my mother works for one.
• Oil companies:  the back-up plan for the root of all that is evil.  Are we noticing the #capitalismfail yet?
• The U.S. Senate:  where evil goes to lay its eggs.  And, ya know, starve people in the name of grandstanding.
• The United States continues to pretend that the government of Somalia exists in some meaningful way, and that poorly trained and equipped peacekeepers can help this imaginary government.  Meanwhile, people suffer.  Perhaps it's time to end the ruse, no?
• DC was struck by a minor earthquake on Friday, and will continue to write news articles about it for at least two weeks.  Panic?  What panic?
• And, finally, Hillary Clinton:  "the godmother of 21st-century statecraft."  Orly?

 There you have it, kids. 

Y'all be careful saving Darfur and what not

I just read a review of what appears to be a fascinating book on the Darfur conflict, Rob Crilley's Saving Darfur: Everyone's Favourite African War. In it, he apparently takes to task the "save" Darfur movement for wandering around with blinders that prevent them from 1) failing to fully comprehend the complexity of the conflict and 2) thereby thwart efforts to end the conflict. I've added the book to my wish list, and I look forward to your ordering it for me so that I can read it. ;)

Back when I was a starving grad student, I once turned down an internship offer from one of these Darfur "saving" organizations, on the grounds that the organization was led by someone a year younger than me (this is important for someone who is the baby of their grad class). I later kicked myself for that for a bit, as the internship I did take ended up being less than fruitful. However, having since come to realize the deeper implications of what the wonderful ladies at Wronging Rights refer to as "raising awareness" without doing much else, I'm now rather glad to not have been associated with the whole thing.

Hat tip: Texas in Africa.

Reason #284 that I refuse to work on certain conflicts

News out of the Middle East today: the Lebanese have one upped the Israelis in producing the world's largest vat of hummus, followed up by the world's largest tabbouleh. This is apparently a source of national pride and some allege is a powerful repudiation of Zionism.

See, there are legitimate grievances, and then there is fucking absurdity. You figure out which of those categories is best applied in this case.

This particular conflict resolution professional refuses to work with the blatantly petty.

(Then again, this particular conflict resolution professional isn't doing any conflict resolution work, whatsoever, so maybe we should consider a change of policy.)

How to be a nerd in two short days

Last weekend I decided to nerd out and do some ridiculous history sightseeing. The agenda: 1) chase John Wilkes Booth into Virginia, 2) Fredericksburg, battle of, 3) Lincoln Cottage (conveniently located near my home).

I got a late start Saturday, thanks mostly to my own laziness. I decided to skip ye olde crime scene (Ford's Theater) and head directly onto the chase. First stop: Mary Surratt's Tavern, out in Clinton. I toured the home, which is well preserved, and endured the inane questioning of a touron couple and their decidedly special obnoxious child. However, I neglected to take a photo, so you'll just have to trust me. After that it was just stops along the road, as most everything else on the route is either closed, privately held, or just plain gone and marked by one of those little roadside plaques. A few photos:

Dr. Mudd's House

St. Mary's Church

A pine thicket, obviously

After that, I went back in time two years to ye olde Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I walked along the line of battle that was (then) just outside of town (it got too dark for me to attend to the other flank). Again, more boredom:

Sunken Road, Stone Wall, and Ennis House

Inside the Ennis House (don't live in a war zone)

From Marye's Heights toward town and the Union assault

When cannonball meets marble post (Willis Cemetery)

The official tally at Fredericksburg National Cemetary (Union soldiers only)

And then finally the Lincoln Cottage located at the Armed Forces Retirement Home. The museum is small, but quite nice. You can only tour the cottage on an official tour though, which is a little too much Disney history for my tastes (as in, you really don't need a giant plasma screen in each room to have some Lincoln impersonator talk at me). Anyway, I learned something, so that's all that matters.

The front of the cottage

And the rear view.

We now return to our regularly scheduled non-historical nerdiness, already in progress.

Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves

I just saw this video (below), of Radiohead's tribute to Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier who fought in World War I. I don't know much about him, but it seems as though he ended up being a rather anti-war individual as a result of his experiences.



Anyway, you can probably tell my favorite quote from the piece by the title of this post. And I've added his autobiography to my wishlist.

Hat tip: Armchair Generalist.

A word on Gaza

I make no pretenses about knowing anything at all about the Middle East. I find that the conflicts there are both ridiculously intractable and feel that they probably get more than their fair share of airtime vis-a-vis other nasty, brutal conflicts going on in the world at any given time. This infuriates me. While I believe that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, I often believe that particular tactics employed by the IDF are simply indefensible, and sometimes constitute breaches of international humanitarian law. Fighting rocks with helicopter gunships or rockets with infantry invasions blows any concept of proportionality to pieces. That said, certain Palestinian actors also need to learn/realize that violence clearly gets them nowhere except bombed back into the stone age. Should either side ever demonstrate the possession of a lick of common sense, I'll pay closer attention. This concludes my oversimplification.

Over the past day or so, I've read a few items that have put the conflict in perspective.

• This post argues that this particular conflict has greater geopolitical implications for the region that will most likely require some sort of new dialogue between the United States and Iran. Worth reading.
• Here we see the idea advanced that Israel's political leaders may lack the brainpower necessary to execute an effective strategy, and may not even have a strategy. They continue to count tactical advances as victories, when is a pretty low threshold of success.
• Then, the IDF's narrative about how/why the UN school in Gaza was bombed earlier this week continues to shift, and in highly dubious ways.
• And finally, let's bear in mind that Gaza has a higher population density than Los Angeles. We need to recognize that an all-out ground and air war is taking place is what is effectively one big city where the inhabitants are forbidden from leaving.

I'm now going to return to things I know a bit more about.

Sarko goes to Moscow

Did anyone else find this morning's op-ed by Nicolas Sarkozy to be just a wee bit laughable? I mean, of course it was self-serving and self-congratulatory -- it was a statement by a politician -- but still, M. le President's grasp on reality seems a touch questionable.

The way Sarkozy sees it, he stood up and led Europe into action (albeit about 3 days late, according to his timeline) to stand up to the big, bad, overly exuberant Russians and the strategically inept Georgians and tell them who was boss. He even foolishly suggests that now that the hard work of signing cease-fire has been taken care of, the UN Security Council can step in and make things better, as though that has any chance of happening given the Council's membership. To his credit, Sarkozy suggests that not everything in his six-point plan is going along on schedule, but no matter, Europe proved its muster and is now ready for an even bigger Brussels-based bureacracy that can be even faster than Sarkozy and Kouchner (yes, I too thought that leap was a bit much).

What really seems to have happened is that the young Napoleon didn't talk to big, bad Russia; he talked to little, bad Russia. Meanwhile, the Russian army seems to have confused the words"retreat" and "advance." So you enjoy patting yourself on the back, Sarko (you too, Condi). I think the rest of us non-politician types will stick with paying attention to actual events.

Guess who said this

Time for a fun new game! Guess who uttered the following words:

“Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”

As well as this gem:

“Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations,” he said, “or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”

If you guessed George W. Bush, you win! How he said this stuff with no sense of irony whatsoever is beyond me. Then again, I'm just a guy with a blog, not the leader of the "free" world.

Start a war and watch the rest of the world disappear

I realize I've probably lodged this before, but have you ever noticed how one little war starts off somewhere, and the rest of the planet basically falls off the international news radar screen. This is especially true if the war in question involves white people.

Now I certainly don't mean to downplay the events unfolding in Georgia right now. They're tragic, and after spending the afternoon reading about all I can get my hands on about the subject (it's not my area, thus I have a steep learning curve), it seems to me that the whole thing is pretty damn senseless. My general impression is that the Georgians tried something they thought they could get away with, in the interest of pleasing the West, and now it's bitten them in the ass royally. Prospects for any sort of decent peace seem a little slim.

But back to the rest of the planet, as that's my beef, right? Let's see, some iffy stuff in Kashmir, a coup in Mauritania, alleged progress in Zimbabwe negotiations, and a seemingly destabilizing Bolivia.

Thinking about the Hamdan verdict

I was going to do a little write-up on yesterday's Hamdan decision, but the NYT editorial page expressed my various thoughts (including outrage) so well, that I'm just going to link to them.

For a more detailed account of why the verdict is bunk, check out Opinio Juris.

We're all still monkeys

A friend of mine sent me this terribly fascinating piece today. Here's a quote to lure you in:

And although human males might not be inflexibly polygamous or come with bright red butts and six-inch canines designed for tooth-to-tooth combat, it was clear that our species had at least as much in common with the violent primates as with the gentle ones.

Basically, the author, Robert M. Sapolsky, tries to establish a biological history of peace and conflict in primates, including human beings. I'll admit to having been in the "we're the only beasts in the forest that line up and kill each other" camp, but have realized over time that's incorrect. Sapolsky goes on to explore not only instances of violence in different primate species, but also forms of conflict resolution, including this teaser line:

And then there is the sex.

The piece is long, but worth the read. It certainly casts a unique perspective on this whole peace business.

U.S. Africa policy quick takes

This is what happens when you do nothing for far too long.

This is the kind of thing we should be doing when things goes wrong (give that man a medal).

And this is what we end up doing because we lack sufficient credibility to do anything else.

I think that's all pretty self explanatory.

Yet another example of a derailed national security policy

I applaud these women up in Greenbelt for their efforts to help military families stretch their incredibly limited resources. However, I continue to be sickened that we can't seem to provide a decent salary to the individuals (many of whom were already low-income) we send into the line of fire in wars with no clear objective and no end in sight.

That is all.

Attempting to make sense of U.S. policy on African peace and security

For the past week or so, I've been trying to wrap my brain around U.S. policy toward Africa, in light of a presidential visit, the FY09 budget request, and the development of events on the ground.

First, an incredibly brief synopsis of the current security situation in Africa. The Ethiopian/U.S. intervention in Somalia has basically failed to bring security to the country, and has possibly made it worse. The whole point of supporting intervention in the first place was to root out terrorist threats there, but that obviously can't be done in a context of more generalized fighting. Just up the road, Ethiopia and Eritrea are in a period of heightening tensions, with Eritrea basically thwarting the UN peacekeeping mission along the border. Looking a little further west, implementation of the CPA in Sudan is more precarious than ever, the Darfur peacekeeping operation is pretty much stalled, fighting continues in Chad and C.A.R., which has led to refugees now flowing into Cameroon, and the EU peacekeeping mission for Chad/C.A.R. is basically on hold. There's a bit of hope that we might soon see some positive progress in Northern Uganda, and if so, that process might require some greater international assistance. Things in the eastern Congo are still tenuous. Who knows what will happen in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the countries of the Mano River Basin in West Africa are on the long, slow road to recovery, and need support.

In this context (or, perhaps, in spite of it), the Bush Administration has proposed a dramatic cut to its financial support to UN peacekeeping, which of course is in addition to our existing arrears to the peacekeeping fund. Instead, they propose focusing more exclusively on various troop training/peacekeeping capacity building programs through bilateral agreements. These programs have existed for several years now, under a huge variety of names, but generally focus on generating more professional armed forces that are trained in the intricacies of peace and stability operations. Although some somewhat shady partners get help through these programs (like Ethiopia), in general I think they're a good thing.

So what's the problem then? It's pretty simple, actually. All the trained troops in the world won't make a peacekeeping operation effective. Those troops need equipment, transportation, weaponry of various types (beyond the assortment provided through the programs above), and most importantly, civilian leadership in each mission. What's the point of having a bunch of trained troops if there aren't any missions to send them to? A peace operation is usually a pretty complex undertaking, and well-trained, professional security forces are but one part of them. With the number of UN and African Union peace operations continuing to increase in Africa, it is essential that the Administration look at the whole picture when making policy and budgetary decisions of this sort.

If, then, the Bush Administration thinks they're somehow promoting peace and stability in Africa through their robbing Peter to pay Paul funding logic, they definitely have another thing coming. If their proposal makes it into the actual 2009 budget (and based on last year's stunning performance by Congressional Democrats, it likely will), this will become yet another foreign policy mess that the next administration will have to clean up.

Did you ever notice...

How American media/attention spans (and to a lesser extent, the Western world more generally), can only focus on one African conflict at a time? After the holidays we had all Kenya all the time, with an occasional burst of news from the DRC when things in Kenya were looking calm. Now that there's been an uprising in Chad, Kenya has disappeared. Meanwhile, some blogs I follow have been practically pleading for people to consistently pay attention to things in places like Sudan, Uganda, and Somalia.

And, of course, there's always the bit about there never being any coverage at all of good news from Africa, but that's a book (several already written, in fact), in itself.

I'm probably roughly 400 years late to this particular parade. And it isn't necessarily something I haven't observed before. Just sayin'...

Meanwhile, today's piece in the Times magazine on Bernard Kouchner was a fascinating read. Check it out. It sheds some light on a few things.

Simple yet sobering call for international justice

This past week, current and former prosecutors from current and past war crimes tribunals gathered in Chautauqua, New York to discuss the history and future of international humanitarian law, sometimes referred to as the laws of war. In their declaration, the prosecutors -- two of whom had served at Nuremberg -- made it plain that now that the body of international law has become more sophisticated over the past 100 years, there is now no excuse for allowing war criminals to escape justice. They argue that because justice for such crimes is now enshrined in law, there is no room for political decisions regarding whether or not someone accused should stand trial, instead these laws are quite clear that these individuals must stand trial.

The irony here, of course, is that this meeting was held in the United States, and that two of the most vocal proponents of the enforcement of international law were the two former Nuremberg prosecutors, both of whom are American. Indeed, since the United States called for the founding of the Nuremberg Tribunals in the late 1940s, the U.S., especially under the leadership of the Bush administration, has backed off on its support of international justice, as most recently demonstrated by the refusal to submit the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to the Senate for ratification. However, many, including some of the military officials ostensibly being "protected" by ICC non-participation, have already stated that the United States has little to lose from being a full participant in international criminal law mechanisms.

While I am generally supportive of international justice mechanisms, I should also point out that there can be an incongruence between international and local demands/requirements for justice following a conflict. The ICTR prosecutor notes these in the Post article above. There is a need to be cautious in using an overly prescriptive reading of international criminal law that we then apply to all cases. Instead, we should take local concerns (eg, type of justice sought, level of retribution desired, fears of further destabilization as a result of prosecutions) into account while seeking to also fulfill our obligations under the law. This, however, often creates a paradoxical terrain for decision-making that is where the tensions between human rights oriented folks and conflict resolution oriented folks (like me) most play out.

I leave you with the final two clauses of the declaration's preamble, which illustrate this paradox quite nicely (though they also fall pretty squarely on the human rights end of things), and certainly more eloquently than I can:

Recognizing that both truth and justice create sustainable peace;

Highlighting that justice is not an impediment to peace, but is in fact its most certain guarantor.

For more information about the prosecutors' meeting, go here.

A Peace Racketeer speaks out

I came across this article by Bruce Bawer this morning. For reasons that are probably obvious (if not, read "about me" to your right), I found it both insulting as well as inaccurate. Bawer argues that the peace movement, which he refers to as a "racket," is some sinister effort aimed at destroying America and individual liberty, and he suggests that this movement's heart is not grassroots activists (his words are "naive Quakers", which could be the subject of a whole other post), but a professional cadre of individuals seeking to subvert the Western world.

Aside from the paranoia that is rampant some of his rantings, Bawer also demonstrates some remarkably poor scholarly skills, especially with his insistence upon using leading peace scholar Johan Galtung's remarks given in the context of events as evidence that his theories, which are argued more in books rather than more political speeches or editorials, are not only flawed but destructive. I will grant you that some peace groups openly align with political groups that many in the West, myself included, might find distasteful. Yet this reality should not be used to make a judgment of peace studies as a field, as the two are not sufficiently linked together as to be relevant.

Bawer also asserts that peace studies are illiberal (using a classical definition of liberal here) because of their alleged anti-Americanism. This too, however, is unfounded. Indeed, peace studies and conflict resolution are rooted quite firmly in the liberal tradition. The difference is not that these fields are illiberal, but rather they have moved beyond a very limited definition to a more expansive view of what liberal societies consist of.

What really seems to be Bawer's problem, though, is his distaste for the notion of structural violence. Unfortunately for him, the validity of that concept has been excepted in academic disciplines well outside of just a few peace studies programs. Indeed, recognizing that whole systems and structures of societies can in themselves be agents of oppression seems more like a far deeper understanding than simply blaming human suffering on that which is easily visible at the surface. Heaven forbid someone recognize that a terrorist somewhere justify his violence on the grounds that his family has no food. Recognizing that the terrorist has a complaint does not make one sympathetic to his chosen method of voicing his grievance. It just means that perhaps some people, say peace studies and conflict resolution folks, for instance, may have realized that one effective way to reduce the threat of terrorism is to see that basic human needs are met and that human rights are respected, as opposed to the current approach of the U.S. government and others that suggests that shooting brown men in loose clothing is more effective. I hate to break it to Bawer, but blowing up terrorist camps is treating the symptom, not the problem. I agree that from time to time treating immediate symptoms is necessary, but if one never makes a holistic assessment of the body upon which the symptoms appear, there's a fairly strong chance that those symptoms -- active terrorists in this case -- will appear again.

The final troubling element in Bawer's doomsday scenario is that affluent young students are being attracted to peace studies programs, as they prepare for careers in public service, especially in government or nonprofit work. Clearly, the fact that the affluent are studying something radical should remind us of two things. 1) Peace studies isn't offered very widely, and it's usually done at private institutions, where the affluent are more likely to go. 2) Bawer is afraid of the affluent young learning something outside the established norm because affluence is a ticket to power in this society, and if the affluent change their opinions over the course of succeeding generations, then society might change.

Sorry Bruce, but societies change. While you and your cronies were busy protecting American liberties, others around the world were raising hell about the need to protect the liberties of those in the camps, the killing fields, and the villages across the world for much of the past 70 odd years. Many of us still are.

Allow me to make this confession. I'm dedicated to peace. One needn't prepare for peace by preparing for war. And preparing for peace by preparing for peace is too complicated for many to grasp. Rather, we must prepare for peace by learning how to interact with our adversaries without violence. However, there will be many around the world that will continue to be drawn to violence for the next several centuries, I'm afraid. Even if we were to shoot or detain all of those people, more would come up. This isn't because mass-scale violence is part of nature (we're the only species that kills its other members in large quantities for reasons not related to food, shelter, or species regeneration), but because shooting people doesn't get to the root of the problem. Like it or not, structural violence exists. Learning how to combat that violence, with an array of weapons ranging from food to access to sophisticated criminal justice systems, will be far less costly over the long term, and will result in a more sustainable world where not only American rights and liberties are protected, but those of every last person on earth. To effect this change, we need time, people, patience and the acceptance that no political, social or cultural system is without flaws. Finally, we need to accept that change isn't to be feared, but welcomed. That is how you prepare for peace: by seeking to preserve not just American or Western lives, but everyone's.


Hat tip to Arts and Letters Daily.

I thought she retired

Allow me to just go ahead and jump into the chorus of people laughing at Cindy Sheehan's announcement that she'll (maybe) challenge Nancy Pelosi for her seat in Congress in 2008.

Now let me take a moment to prove my bona fides here. I'm just about as anti-Iraq War as they get, and I'll gladly point out the various reasons why that effort was and is both illegal and unethical. I'm not yet a pacifist, but a Quaker education and a degree in peace have pushed me markedly in that direction. Nevertheless, I have a long-standing (though rarely mentioned) beef with Cindy Sheehan (not that I've ever met her).

Plenty of people have gone on about how she's unqualified for this and that, how she takes overly simplistic positions on incredibly complex subjects, etc. I'll leave those arguments to their merits (or lack thereof).

My thing is this. Cindy Sheehan is far too possessive of the "parent of an Iraq War service personnel killed in action" mantel. I hear her story about her son's service and her grief at his loss and it is truly heartbreaking, and certainly one I empathize with. However, through her things like setting up Camp Casey and naming every soldier and marine that's fallen and claiming that they died in vain, she's disrespecting the memories of those individuals. I won't tell her how she should remember her son or what she should feel about his loss. But she shouldn't go around telling the other parents/loved ones to be enraged. Some parents/spouses/children of deceased Iraq veterans believe that their family's victim in the war died honorably, in an honorable cause. No matter how much Cindy Sheehan, or anyone else, feels about the war and its consequences, absolutely no one has the right to challenge people in their grieving. Sheehan should have respected the wishes of those families who did not want their loved one's names displayed at Camp Casey (and elsewhere) and who did not want to be connected with the message she was conveying. She simply cannot rightly claim ownership over and complete understanding of every single U.S. military death in Iraq or Afghanistan, and her claim to speak for all war-dead parents is totally unfounded. It's painfully disrespectful and frankly rude.

Now my faith in any elected representative is virtually nil, and my trust of them is even less existent. This definitely means I don't really like any of them. Nonetheless, I truly wish Speaker Pelosi the best in a potential campaign against Cindy Sheehan. Besides, I thought Sheehan was supposed to have bowed out of public life by now.

On Memorial Day

I was reading this piece this morning, and I was reminded of some of my not so distant research on the creation of historical memory after conflict. Admittedly, I haven't looked at much on the importance of memory during conflict, but I was estimate that memorial efforts create more of a public stir when the whole society is engaged in the conflict, which is not the case with the U.S. in Iraq at present.

It's funny how Memorial Day has taken on so many different meanings in it's 150 year or so history. It went from commemorating a moral victory, to remembrance of all war dead, and is now basically an excuse for selling discounted stuff. And yet in some ways the day hasn't lost any of its original meanings, but has rather gained a more multi-faceted identity. For some, the conflict between pro- and anti-slavery forces isn't quite over. Indeed, one could argue that the victory of the Civil War has yet to be consolidated in the form of a truly just and equitable society, given the continuing persistence of economic and social inequalities based upon race. Yet for others, the violent horrors of something so long ago don't really effect them much, and thus it's a good time for a barbecue and some discount shopping. Still others have attached new meanings to Memorial Day to commemorate the loved ones they lost in more recent conflicts. Sadly, a new group has this day, and likely all others, to remember the loss of someone close to them within these past three years.

But if Memorial Day really is about remembering the suffering of war, then how good are we at living up to that mandate? How many of us really stop and think about the U.S. service personnel that have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially if we don't really know anyone who's died there? Sadder still, how many of us really think about the innocent civilians that have died in these wars and in others? In today's wars, something like 90 percent of casualties are civilians, which is the complete reverse of 100 years ago. Perhaps the continuing evolution of Memorial Day and similar commemorations will lead us to think about these newer questions.

In any event, memorials are essential to any society's dealing with conflict. As Martha Minow (1998: 121) puts it: “what’s needed, paradoxically, is a process for reinterpreting what cannot be made sensible, for assembling what cannot be put together, and for separating what cannot be severed from both present and future.” Memorial Day, along with other days and monuments, will likely continue to give voice to this ongoing struggle.

A weekend of bad Africa policy

Yesterday we got the lovely news that there may be a major food crisis for impoverished Zambians unless aid groups get a swift infusion of cash to buy food, which is, admittedly, available. However, the money for such a move is most readily available from the U.S. (or Europe), but U.S. law insists that food aid be purchased in America, not local producers. In spite of shockingly reasonable and appropriate Bush administration proposals to change the law, at least for dire circumstances like this one, Congress under both parties refuses to do so. Their rationale is that the bottom would fall out of corporate America's support for international aid, because they would no longer get rich off it, and we all know the general population doesn't care.

So there's that.

Then today we get the joyous news that the U.S. allowed the Ethiopians to buy military equipment from North Korea, after sanctions against such purchases had been put in place at U.S. insistence. Granted, few countries still produce parts that are compatible with old Soviet tanks, and those that do are probably also vile human rights violators, but, still. This revelation makes the whole War on Terror thing seem even more like the Cold War. In this case, alleged terrorists in Somalia were our enemy, and the Ethiopians didn't like them either, so Ethiopia is our friend and we should give them the leverage to do whatever they need to fight terror. Even if that means violating the very sanctions we wrote. Meanwhile, State Department lackies are gingerly suggesting that Ethiopia find a new supplier, which they've been doing for over a year.

And what caps it all off? Assistant Secretary of State (and official useless mouthpiece) Jendayi Frazer went to Somalia to express support for the recently beleaguered Somali government. She made no mention of the revelation that Somali, Ethiopian, and perhaps also African Union forces committed war crimes during last week's campaign against Islamic Courts loyalists (or, perhaps more precisely, anti-government fighters resisting perceived clan favoritism). I'm pretty sure open messages of support for weak governments by the United States will only make said governments weaker, given the super popularity of the U.S. at present.