Does this mean we have to invade them, too?

[Torrere]

I was really very optimistic for the Islamic Courts Union. I thought that it was pretty cool that, over the past ten years, the Somalis had slowly developed a system for maintaining law and order by creating independent Islamic courts in different regions. I thought it was pretty cool that they banded together and managed to oust the warlords that have been tearing Somalia to pieces since 1991. It thought it was pretty cool that Mogadishu was peaceful again after 15 years of strife.

Of course, I knew that they were Islamic and therefore our enemy and therefore it wouldn't last. The War Nerd wrote a column on December 1st predicting that Ethiopia would invade Somalia, and the Ethiopians invaded on December 24th. (So the US didn't have to do any work at all, although we were probably funding the Ethiopians just like we had been funding a group of Somali warlords earlier this year).

The Somali army had a bunch of foot soldiers and "technicals" (a technical is basically a pickup truck with a machine gun bolted to it, invented by the Red Cross as "technical support"). Technicals are pretty popular these days, but they don't stand up to tanks very well, and the Ethiopians sent in nearly 200 tanks, along with helicopters, airplanes, and bombers. The ICU lost almost all of their territory within days. They couldn't fight a conventional war, so they gave up and switched to guerilla warfare mode. It'll be interesting to see who wins.

We don't need to invade because the Ethiopians already have. The American airstrike was a pretty small thing and probably doesn't signify much. I doubt that we'll put many troops in Somalia, and I doubt that the West will care much about what happens there.