Why no thread on the French military intervention in Mali?

[Hauldren Collider]

No.

Yes: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/mi...ali-conflict-b

[MichaeltheGreat]

Yes: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/mi...ali-conflict-b

Mocked on Twitter. His source was administration briefings. Not much of a "prediction" in his actual statement, more a statement that AQ types were active in northern Mali. News at 10 there.

Anyone paying much attention to global Islamist movements knows that AQIM is the current mole with its head popping up in the perpetual Whack-A-Mole game of fighting Al Qaeda. AQAP is on the decline, or more accurately, significantly limited in its effectiveness.

Mali is also not an essential national security interest of the US.

[PLATO]

Mali is also not an essential national security interest of the US.

Do we know for sure that there is no oil in that desert?

[MichaeltheGreat]

[Dinner]

Yes: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/mi...ali-conflict-b

Gee, you mean he "predicted" something AFTER it happened? The rebels have been in control of northern Mali for almost a year now.

[Garth Vader]

Gee, you mean he "predicted" something AFTER it happened? The rebels have been in control of northern Mali for almost a year now.

That's still pretty good for a Republican.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Yeah, I remember all those posters back in the day talking about how Iraq would replace KSA as the oil swing producer and how Iraq was going to be a shining example of democracy for the ME.

[Alexander's Horse]

Pity there is so much francophobia around, the French do interventions all the time, and do them well, we might learn something, they learned from their mistakes in Algeria and Vietnam. This could be one to watch.

One thing they are good at is economy of force and knowing when to get in and get out, even to cut their losses, both things Anglo-led forces aren't good at, too much d*ckswinging gets in the way maybe. A french officer wrote one of the seminal texts on counter-insurgency and there is an excellent French film about the Algerian war.

Also African Union forces have done some good interventions in recent years, countries like Ghana and Nigeria deployed useful missions in Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia and even Somalia, not perfect but another neglected model, which seems to be coming into play in North Africa with these AQ idiots in the Mahgreb and elsewhere like the horn of Africa.

[Alexander's Horse]

DP

[regexcellent]

A bunch of the work in Sierra Leone got subcontracted out to ex-South African/Rhodesian mercenaries. That said, they did a pretty good job.

[DinoDoc]

Mali is also not an essential national security interest of the US.

Neither was Libya.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Libya is. Mali is not.

[DinoDoc]

You are half correct.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

What gives people? There was a time when such news would have had multiple threads here but now no one can be bothered?

Remember the British military intervention in Sierra Leone. That got no threads either.

[MichaeltheGreat]

You are half correct.

Just because you're geopolitically uninformed doesn't mean I'm incorrect. I know indoor plumbing is a recent innovation where you are, do you have cars yet? Libya (a) has this stuff called oil, though not much of it, enough to **** with the market when the global economy gets to a high demand level again, and (b) has nice porous borders, lots of places to hide, both of which can be useful to destabilize lots of interesting places. Mali (a) doesn't have oil, and (b) has a lot fewer useful places from which any place interesting can be destabilized. First Mali, then Burkina Faso isn't really high on many people's list of concerns.