In war we focus on battles won and lost. Little question for the need to fight: the causes were reasoned as justified.  In chaos spiced with denial and obfuscation it’s like punching a cloud of smoke. You die of exhaustion without landing a single punch.

The resources the U.S. currently deploys in Africa approaches that of the Afghanistan invasion, while 60% of our State Department has been eviscerated. “The growing scale and lack of clear motive for shadow wars and African militarization is a cause for concern,” concludes the UC-Davis’ “nonpartisan” political magazine today.

And it’s not working. It’s making things critically worse.

Somalia had been on the road to peace. In fact, the African Union forces begin their withdrawal today, something that foreign diplomats around the world are asking them to reverse. But the military commitment of the AU is tough for those countries and it’s wholly unlikely now that they can reverse a decision to bring the boys home that was made more than a year ago.

Meanwhile, the U.S. began rapid increases in air strikes throughout the continent in September. Yesterday, for example, Air France Presse reported that two to three air strikes are being launched daily in Somalia. A few days ago the U.S. State Department began evacuating a large number of the 358 U.S. diplomats in Mogadischu. Now we know why.

The increased American fighting is revving up terrorism. Somalia which was peaceful is now imploding, again.

Suddenly, after years of terrorists’ retrenchment in the Horn of Africa, they’re back.

Some American politicians finally realize this but few have the courage to try to do something about it until public sentiment becomes as powerful as it was against repealing Obamacare.

Wake up! When a fighter bomber rockets over your village and blasts it to smithereens and doesn’t even get the single target it was after, what are you as a young shepherd whose crops and sheep have been destroyed going to do, now? If some of your relatives have been killed, or die now of starvation, do you embrace democracy and wave the flag?

Of course not! You join the militants! You want your millet and sheep back!

With all that’s happening in America and the world, today, it may be difficult for me to wrest your attention to Africa. I’m sure there are dozens if not hundreds of peer advocates for Asia and South America and Alabama trying to do the same.

And that’s what’s so frightening: the extent of the disorganization and militarism that America is spreading over the earth.