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Early last month, at a tiny military post near the tumbledown town of Jamaame in Somalia, small arms fire began to ring out as mortar shells
crashed down. When the attack was over, one Somali soldier had been
wounded -- and had that been the extent of the casualties, you undoubtedly would never have heard about it.
As it happened, however, American commandos were also operating from that outpost and four of them were wounded, three badly enough to be evacuated for further medical care. Another special operator, Staff Sergeant
Alexander Conrad, a member of the U.S. Army's Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets), was
killed.
If the story sounds vaguely familiar --
combat by U.S. commandos in African wars that America is technically not fighting -- it should. Last December, Green Berets operating alongside local forces in Niger
killed 11 Islamic State militants in a firefight. Two months earlier, in October, an ambush by an Islamic State terror group in that same country, where few Americans (including members of
Congress) even knew U.S. special operators were stationed,
left four U.S. soldiers dead -- Green Berets among them.
(The military first described that mission as providing "advice and assistance" to local forces, then as a "reconnaissance patrol" as part of a broader "train, advise, and assist" mission, before it was finally exposed as a kill or capture operation.) Last May, a Navy SEAL was
killed and two other U.S. personnel were wounded in a raid in Somalia that the Pentagon described as an "advise, assist, and accompany" mission. And a month earlier, a U.S. commando reportedly killed a member of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal militia that has terrorized parts of Central Africa for decades.
Comment: Trump's 'trade war' with China as well as wanting to improve relations with Russia move toward a normalized position of US influence in the world, and it is clear that the powers that be in Washington are none too pleased with that!