More on US strategy in Somalia

[MissWaverly]

America attacks
Leader
Wednesday January 10, 2007

The US airstrikes which reportedly killed large numbers of people in southern Somalia on Sunday and Monday - whether they are jihadi militants or civilians is not yet known - were the first overt military action Washington has taken in the country since 1994, the year after bloody clashes between UN forces and warlords and the grim Black Hawk Down battle which left 18 US servicemen dead.

The issue here is not Washington's right to strike back at its sworn enemies, but how many innocents are wiped out in the process. One of the instruments used was extremely blunt, an AC130 gunship which strafed a village near the Kenyan border. The tactic is well proven in Afghanistan and Iraq: kill everything that moves within given coordinates and then see who you have got afterwards. It's the military equivalent of drift-net fishing.
Unlike when you are fishing, you can't throw the minnows back into the sea afterwards, and the battle for Somalia is all about the minnows.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,1986815,00.html