“Rice revealed herself to be an apostle of George Bush’s War on Somalia.”

By Glen Ford | BAR

If you believe that Barack Obama will pursue a policy in the Horn of Africa that is substantially different than that of George Bush, you are in for a deep disappointment. Only weeks after Ethiopian regime’s U.S.-instigated invasion of Somalia almost two years ago, Susan Rice, Obama’s choice for Ambassador to the United Nations, endorsed the aggression – an atrocity that has resulted in the displacement of 1.5 million Somalis and impending starvation of 3.5 million more. More on Ethiopia: Susan Rice is bad news for Africa

This poses near-term dangers not only for long-suffering Somalis, whose plight is barely recorded, but for the world. Somalia is a failed state that has been without effective government now for 17 years. International trade is already hampered by the surge in piracy off its coast. If the al-Shabaab militia are able to seize the opportunity to gain more ground, they could turn Somalia into the breeding ground for international terrorism that the US feared it was becoming back in 2006, although there was little evidence for this at the time. More on Meles Zenawi acting like a cornered rat in Somalia