EDITORIAL - Failed Africom: Obama should question the command's necessity

American military involvement in a botched operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that led to many deaths is the second failure in Africa of the Pentagon's newly created Africa Command.
The first misstep involved U.S. military support of an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to overthrow an Islamist government. The Ethiopians withdrew at the end of 2008 and the Islamists are back, in greater strength, after considerable bloodshed.
The second was U.S. support of an effort in December by the Ugandan and Congolese armies to fight the Lord's Resistance Army, a tribally based force that has been in rebellion against the Ugandan government for 22 years. The idea was that the two African armies, with U.S. help in the form of advisers, fuel, communications and intelligence, would surround a group of LRA forces and kill or capture them. The operation was badly executed, however, and the LRA group escaped and went on a rampage. Some 50 villages were destroyed, an estimated 900 civilians were killed and terror has reigned ever since...more..http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/finepoint/archive/2009/02/21/editorial-failed-africom-obama-should-question-the-command-s-necessity.aspx