US Low Intensity Conflict: Repackaged as anti-Terror

If you can't win a proxy war against Communists, change the name.

Remember those days no long ago when the Algerians and Nigerians were proxies in the "Cold War"? The Russians had this nasty habit of bringing in Cubans to do the dirty work.

Made quite a mess of things. Small problem when the Russians went bankrupt and stopped giving the Cubans as much money. The Cubans ran out of money and pulled troops out of Africa.

Well, those days of proxy wars might have been long gone had the Cold War ended. The Cold is now Hot.

This time, America has a new rally cry. Same war, just a different name.

All those problems Americans had dealing with the Africans before? They haven't gone away.

We'll see whether they learned anything from the last go around. Chances are they same bungling mess that caused the Americans to throw their hands up in disgust will simply resurface.

But this time, when they get upset that things aren't cooperating, we could expect someone in DoD or DoJ to write another memo [!] to "justify" using mercenaries.

"Hay, we knew it was illegal, but this is against . . . [whatever enemy you want to justify lawlessness this week]."

If you thought the Iran-Contra boon doggle with Ollie North was a farce, you haven't seen anything.

See, even though the US is fighting a war against terrorists, even the US Embassy in Israel still has to ensure it does audits using Generally Accepted Government Accounting Standards.

They didn't teach you all that well at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on all this cloak and dagger stuff, so now you're getting a real good education the hard way: Guerrillas, proxy wars, and a nasty habit of money getting siphoned off.

But this time, instead of denying the evidence, the goons in the procurement area are now going after the auditors. Thanks for the lovely road show, CIA. Could you have gotten those contracts a little more botched up any worse?

Not to worry, there are other proxies to fight in Central America and South Asia. Terrorists have a nasty habit of being conveniently in the right place when a government needs a new excuse to twist Congress into going into more debt.

Remember, they reason they are fighting is that self-evident examples are not enough to share the cookies and make sure everyone is moving in the right direction.

Move along, there's no problem in Africa. Nothing to see there.

"Master, I think I am tired playing with this light sabre."