I am totally confused as to what the United States’ policy is in North Africa. Consider these excerpts from The Guardian’s report on Secretary of State Clinton’s testimony before Congress on Wednesday:
“The US secretary of state singled out the French-led intervention against armed Islamists in Mali as the most urgent crisis ...
Clinton, who is due to leave office shortly, told the Senate foreign relations committee that jihadists in north Africa pose a direct threat to the US …
‘We now face a spreading jihadist threat. We have driven a lot of the AQ [al-Qaida] operatives out of Afghanistan, Pakistan. We have killed a lot of them, including, of course, Bin Laden. But we have to recognise that this is a global movement,’ she said.
The US secretary of state singled out Mali ...
‘We are in for a struggle. But it is a necessary struggle. We cannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven,’ she said.”
And yet The Wall Street Journal has reported that, when France went into Mali, the United States not only refused France’s request for tankers to help refuel French fighter planes over Mali, but we even tried to bill France for the cost of the transport planes that we did provide.*
Let me see if I can understand this. The Secretary of State says that “jihadists in north Africa pose a direct threat to the US”, but when France tries to do something about this risk, we not only provide limited help, but we try to get paid for the help we do provide. No, I can’t understand it.
We did eventually withdraw our request for reimbursement, but the fact that we even asked for the money is small and not befitting the country I want us to be. It makes me wonder whether, if Barack Obama had been president in 1948, instead of Harry Truman, the Berlin Airlift would have been COD.
-----------
* Bret Stephens, “Obama’s You’re-On-Your-Own World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2013.
Comments