California Conservative

Based on Ralph Peters’ NY Post op-ed and Captain Ed’s post, you’d have to say that the Somali operation undertaken by Delta Force was a major success. Here’s what Col. Peters wrote:

With AC-130 gunships pounding terrorist hide-outs and training sites in the badlands near the Kenyan border, we may have nailed senior al Qaeda figures involved in bombing our embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam. At the very least, we killed some really bad hombres.

As always, terrorist propagandists will claim that only innocent civilians suffered, and media sympathizers will echo their nonsense. Fortunately, though, most pro-terrorist journalists and “human-rights advocates” are preoccupied just now with the awful mistreatment of poor, misunderstood Saddam Hussein.

And the devastation left behind by our gunships is only part of a very big U.S. win:

• Thanks to resolute military action by Ethiopia’s government (quietly backed by Washington), the terror regime in Mogadishu crumbled overnight, collapsing the lie that extremist Islam is on the march to an inevitable victory.
• The speed of the Ethiopian advance cornered hundreds of hardcore Islamist fighters in a forlorn backwater, where they can be killed out of sight of their media defenders. And be killed they will.
• Islamist outrages and subversion inspired unprecedented cooperation between moderate Somalis, Ethiopians, Kenyans and Americans.

For its part, the Kenyan government grew sick of Somalia exporting hatred, weapons and terror. Now Kenyan troops have sealed their border so al Qaeda’s agents can’t escape.

Far from being a growing threat, as America-haters insist, al Qaeda’s on the run. Confident that they had a new refuge in Somalia, international terrorists instead find themselves scrambling to escape justice.

Here’s what Captain Ed focused on:

The US airstrikes have scored a success against one of their intended targets. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who planned the attacks on American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed over 200 people (mostly Africans), died in the US attack on Islamists fleeing Somalia in the wake of their collapse against the Ethiopians:

The suspected al-Qaeda militant who planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa was killed in an American airstrike in Somalia, an official said Wednesday.
“I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage,” Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press. “One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead.” …
Mohammed allegedly planned the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people.
He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.
Mohammed is thought to have been the main target of an American helicopter attack Monday afternoon on Badmadow island off southern Somalia.

The encouraging things we should take from Ed’s and Col. Peters’ analysis is that the combination of Delta Forces, Army Rangers and AC-130 gunships is a lethal weapon against terrorists and the terrorists know it. The thing I’d tell my readers is that, al Qa’ida’s protestations notwithstanding, they’re in a world of hurt down in the Horn of Africa.

We also know that Ethiopia’s forces exposed al Qa’ida as a paper tiger in its supposed Somali stronghold. We know that Ethiopian troops routed al Qa’ida terrorists from Somalia in pretty short order.

Here’s another powerful observation from Col. Peters:

Fanatical dreams of re-establishing, and extending, the Muslim caliphate on the African continent are suddenly in shambles (although our enemies, from al Qaeda to the Saudi royal family, won’t give up just yet). Far from impressing the world with its strength, extremist Islam just revealed its inherent weakness again…

This is why we must not think of Iraq as a lost cause. We just need to employ the right tools with the right ferocity and precision to win decisively. It’s just that simple.

Technorati Tags: Al Qaeda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Delta Force, Army Rangers, Paper Tiger

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Africa, Author: Gary Gross, Blogging, Intel, Iraq, Military, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.