Will the US help France in Mali

George W. Bush, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, Sept. 20, 2001:

"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

"...we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. "

If one believes that Obama is simply carrying out the same foreign policy goals as Bush, then yes, the U.S. will help France in Mali.

 

Britain has offered to help already:

Drones and spy planes on standby to fight al-Qaeda in Mali

U.S. would probably help in the same manner but [next] DOD Secretary Hagel committing any troops there would shock everyone.

 

The Pentagon is preparing to provide military support to French forces in their new fight against rebel militants in northern Mali, according to senior defense officials.

The U.S. is considering a range of options to help, including sending cargo aircrafts to lift more French ground troops into Mali, providing air refueling tankers for French air combat patrols, and offering intelligence gleaned from aerial surveillance

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...forces-in-mali/?test=latestnews#ixzz2HzexqcCk

 

Extremely disheartening.

 

We can't afford it

 

We Shouldn't....

....because France will cut and run within time. They have a history of not seeing things through to the end! I'm even surprised they are there.

However, if the US want to get in with this battle, they'll probably do so under the NATO guideleines.

 

The most effective and least expensive thing the U.S. and French government could do to help the government of Mali is to withdraw all support out from under the Al Qaeda terrorists the U.S. and French government's have been using as proxy fighters in Lybia and Syria.

January 11, 2013 (LD) - A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending France's military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME's article, "The Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?" decides that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome "War on Terror" narrative.

TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop "Islamist" terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the article states:

"...there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for attack."​

What TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France intervened on behalf of during NATO's 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya - providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya's government.

< snip >

It is no coincidence that as the Libyan conflict was drawing to a conclusion, conflict erupted in northern Mali. It is part of a premeditated geopolitical reordering that began with toppling Libya, and since then, using it as a springboard for invading other targeted nations, including Mali, Algeria, and Syria with heavily armed, NATO-funded and aided terrorists. ​

​

French involvement may drive AQIM and its affiliates out of northern Mali, but they are almost sure to end up in Algeria, most likely by design. Algeria was able to balk subversion during the early phases of the US-engineered "Arab Spring" in 2011, but it surely has not escaped the attention of the West who is in the midst of transforming a region stretching from Africa to Beijing and Moscow's doorsteps - and in a fit of geopolitical schizophrenia - using terrorists both as a casus belli to invade and as an inexhaustible mercenary force to do it.​

CONTINUE . . .

Are our memories really that short that we can't remember how we (as in NATO) helped Al Qaeda and the LIFG take over Libya and move into Syria? I mean c'mon NATO was providing air cover for them not all that long ago. They were our allies then, now we're supposed to believe they're back to being our enemy again???

I can't keep up anymore. Our ally becomes our enemy, then our enemy becomes our ally, then our ally becomes the enemy again. Let's settle on one thing or the other. Either Al Qaeda is our ally or it's our enemy. All this switching back and forth every few weeks makes me dizzy.

 

France Bombs Mali While Backing Jihad Elsewhere

Despite openly supporting self-styled Jihadist “revolutionaries” seeking an Islamic theocracy in Syria, and Libya before that, the new socialist French government, with help from other Western powers, has also just launched a series of military attacks against Muslim rebels who seized control of northern Mali. The controversial operations, ironically, are being taken under the guise of fighting Islamic extremism. Meanwhile, Islamists in the region have vowed retaliation, saying the French attacks were killing civilians and promising to strike “at the heart of France.”

< snip >

Even as the socialist French government purports to be fighting Islamists, however, analysts have called those justifications absurd. At the same time, France has been among the most vocal supporters of the Islamic extremists waging war on Syria’s secular tyrant, Bashar al-Assad. In Libya, the French government was also key in the “regime change” plot that armed known Islamic terrorists — many were openly affiliated with al-Qaeda — to overthrow the secular autocracy of dictator Muammar Gadhafi. As the UN and French authorities admit, many of the weapons from the Libyan conflict are now in the hands of the same rebels in Mali who supposedly need to be crushed by global military force.

CONTINUE . . .

Remember this?

UN-backed Forces Slaughter Christians in Ivory Coast

Backed by French and United Nations military forces, and approved by President Barack Obama, Muslim militias loyal to opposition leader Alassane Ouattara are on a rampage in the Ivory Coast that, according to news reports and officials, has left over a thousand Christians dead so far in an effort to oust current President Laurent Gbagbo. Though conflicts have been a regular occurrence in recent decades, the current civil war engulfing the West-African former French colony stems from a contested presidential election held in November. The original vote count indicated a narrow victory for Ouattara, a U.S.-educated Muslim from the largely Islamic Northern part of the country who has worked at the International Monetary Fund and the Central Bank of West African States.

CONTINUE . . .

 

Why There’s a War In Mali: Because We Bumped Off Libya’s Gaddafi

Blowback from Stupid U.S. Policy

The U.S. is constantly fighting enemies which it helped to create.

For example, U.S. backing of Al Qaeda led to 9/11.

The fighters who overthrew Libya’s Gaddafi (as part of our “humanitarian” war there) were largely Al Qaeda terrorists. And after Gaddafi was killed, they flooded into Syria … where we are now fighting them.

As we reported in November:

CONTINUE . . .

 

With Obama's track record, I would expect him to supply weapons to al qaeda funneled thru a third party like Libya, while making a show of supporting the French.

 

Nevermind all the drone strikes undertaken by the Obama administration....

To say that by supporting Libyan rebels we supported Al-Qaeda, is the same as liberal accusations that President Reagan supported the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by funneling weapons to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. There are numerous factions within these movements needless to say.

 

Sorry to disappoint you. It's just a fact.

Deal with it.

 

Nevermind all the history that shows we've been supporting terrorist groups for a very very long time.

Look into what we did in Iran in 1953. We admittedly employed terrorists to overthrow Mohammad Mossadeq, Kermit Roosevelt bragged about it! Do some research into the history of our cozy relationships with terrorists and dictators before you start dismissing things as "liberal" accusations.

In the 80s, the CIA instigated Awatha al-Zuwawi to create an agency in Libya to recruit mercenaries for the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As from 1986, recruits were trained in the Salman al-Farisi Libyan camp in Pakistan, under the authority of anti-Communist billionaire Osama bin Laden.

When bin Laden moved to Sudan, the Libyan jihadists followed him there, and regrouped in a compound of their own. In 1994, Osama bin Laden dispatched Libyan jihadists back to their country to kill Muammar Gaddafi and reverse the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

On 18 October 1995, the group reassembled under the label of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). During the three years that followed, the LIFG attempted to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi on four occasions and to establish a guerrilla in the Southern mountainous region. Following these operations, the Libyan army - under the command of General Abdel Fattah Younes - waged a campaign to eradicate the guerrillas, and the Libyan judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant against Osama bin Laden, disseminated internationally through Interpol as from 1998.

According to UK counter espionage agent David Shayler, the development of the LIFG and the first assassination attempt on Gaddafi by Al-Qaeda was funded by the British MI6 to the tune of 100,000 pounds [1].

Even the mainstream media has reported on our support for the FSA and LIFG in Libya.