When I first heard of the deaths of US military personnel in Niger, I was saddened, but not surprised. Having no shame, the MSM took less than 48 hours to spin the events into a political debacle of legendary indecency. It began with the media providing a platform for a mentally deranged, utterly contemptible, and rather freakish Congress(woman?) from Florida to exploit a family’s grief. As that began to backfire on the Democrats, the propagandists within the MSM got their new talking points and began trying to equate the attack to some type of Benghazi cover-up. What they failed to mention in all of this spin was that there was an element of truth in that the soldiers’ deaths were actually directly related to the events that claimed the American lives in Benghazi. However, it wasn’t Trump’s fault; it was Obama’s.
We have had military personnel stationed across the Saharan belt of Africa for decades. Over the last four years, their numbers and activities have been significantly ramped up to deal with a growing number of well-armed radical Islamic groups. This was a carryover from the disastrous policies of the Obama Administration. The necessity for more troops to deal with the growing threat was in fact created by our own incompetence. It was the direct result of Obama’s policy to topple Gaddafi’s regime in Libya and install radical Islamists in power. In the vacuum created after Gaddafi was murdered and the country was plunged into a failed state status, thousands of tons of military weapons were stolen and sold on the black market to every nasty group you could find across Africa. This super charged every radical movement across the region. Further, radical Islamists flocked to Libya as a safe haven and once they had set up shop, immediately began to expand their destabilizing activities across the region. Niger is only the latest of many countries in Africa to fall victim to these infiltrators.
Moving forward, if Niger’s borders are not sealed, you will see Niger becoming increasingly radicalized and unstable over the next two years. After working in Niger, I assess this to be serious enough to plunge the entire North African region into greater chaos. Although this may not sound important, look at a map. Niger is a central hub of relative stability with good US relations, but surrounded by countries saturated with radical Islamic terrorist groups like Boko Haram to the south, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM) and ISIS to the north, and elements of Al-Shabaab to the east. If Niger’s predominantly Muslim population is radicalized, it will create a belt of hostile Islamic nations from Somalia in the east to Mauritania in the west, which will become the largest terrorist safe haven in the world and in the process cause untold numbers of deaths and misery for the local populations.
It is a sad fact that years later, we are still trying to clean up the mess in Africa that Obama, the man that was supposed to help Africa, made far worse. Unfortunately, I think this situation will get worse before it gets better and the deaths of those soldiers won’t be an anomaly. The next time someone mentions Niger and or Benghazi, make sure you clearly place the blame where it belongs…at the feet of Obama, Clinton, Power, and Rice.
By Guiles Hendrik
October 26, 2017
