"Boko Haram offers to swap kidnapped Nigerian girls for prisoners" Reuters (Republished 18 October 2014)

 
In light of the announced deal between the Government of Nigeria and Boku Haram this seems an appropriate thing to re-post. This was originally posted on SST in May.

"The leader of the Nigerian Islamist rebel group Boko Haram has offered to release more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by his fighters last month in exchange for prisoners, according to a video seen on YouTube. About 100 girls wearing full veils and praying are shown in an undisclosed location in the 17-minute video in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau speaks. Boko Haram militants, who are fighting for an Islamist state, stormed a secondary school in the northeastern village of Chibok on April 14 and seized 276 girls who were taking exams. Some managed to escape but about 200 remain missing." Reuters

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This has been a tragic event and the worldwide frenzy over it is also terrible. 

What a crock all this is!  Is it not clear that this whole thing has been a sophisticated ploy on the part of Boku Haram to "spring" their comrades from Nigerian jails?  And for this Michele Obama makes a continuing spectacle of herself on television and the 24/7 newsfreaks whip up their usual hysteria?  It's a damned good thing that this Shekaku fellow released his video before Michele succeeded in pressuring her husband into doing something foolish.

You can be sure that the girls are dispersed for the purpose of making operational planning difficult and that by now the Stockholm Syndrome has set in.  Trying to get them all onto the buses to leave Boku Haramian Islam would be a real task.

I suggest that a tri-partite delegation consisting of the Reverend Al Sharpton, the Reverend Jesse Jackson the elder (his son being otherwise engaged), and former everything Bill Richardson be sent to negotiate the release of the damsels in distress.  Perhaps Michele could perform an oversight function in this matter.  But, then, Kerry's interests should be considered.  That Nobel has proven elusive.  And then there are the electoral concerns of the old lady from South Carolina.  This could be a game changer for him.

We are the world!  We are the children!

pl 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-nigeria-girls-idUSBREA4A0B620140512

http://time.com/3516883/boko-haram-cease-fire-nigeria-school-girls/

 

Comments

[505thPIR]

A well thought out "Modest Proposal" Col. Swift!

[turcopolier]

505th PIR

I realize now that I failed to include a woman politician in the delegation. Perhaps Sheila Jackson-Lee would do. pl

[Ryan]

If Sheila Jackson-Lee is too busy tying to locate that US flag on Mars I would suggest Oprah.

[turcopolier]

Ryan

SJL has a BA from Yale and a deep understanding of world affairs as was demonstrated: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/jul/21/sheila-jackson-lee/sheila-jackson-lee-says-there-are-two-vietnams-nor/

[Fred]

Too bad Michelle and Barrack didn't have any sons, then they both might give a damn about Nigerian boys, who apparently don't get kidnapped by Boko Haram, only killed. Meanwhile what did Barrack do about piracy in the Gulf of Guinea?

[Basilisk]

All,
Wow! i feel so much better now realizing that Congress has a firm grasp on foreign affairs.
Jackson and Lee must be turning over in their graves.

Yale called, they want their diploma back.

[turcopolier]

Basiliisk

"Jackson and Lee must be turning over in their graves." I don't believe they are related. Perhaps you remember that there is a joke like that in TBC in which a backwoods Virginia soldier in Jackson's corps offers the opinion that he did not think that a Black hunting companion of his "back home" was related to Stonewall even though his name was also Jackson. General hilarity breaks out and this man says with great firmness. "Wall, they could be, don't yuh know." pl

[Peter C]

I think that the President has set in motion the full weight of the USSOCOM.

[turcopolier]

Peter C

Is there some reason for that belief. I suppose the authority of the AUMF against AQ would suffice but if US forces kill or wound any of these girls... This is a very different thing than a raid on a building in Abbotabad. pl

[Peter C]

I don't have any direct information on USSOCOM full balls to wall on this. However, this is an emotional issue for both the President and his wife. Emotion usually wins.

[walrus]

Col. Lang, how dare you not include someone Gay in the delegation!

[The Twisted Genius]

Peter C

Full weight? Nah. They probably will do something akin to the effort against Lord's Resistance Army... a hundred Green Berets working with a Ugandan Task Force... for a long, long time.

This is selective outrage over this one Boko Haram event. There is more than enough horror and sons of bitches in Africa to fuel the tut-tutting and harumphing of all the Neocons and R2Pers for all of time. It's not just groups like Boko Haram and LRA, a lot of the governments are equally vicious and more corrupt. Why all this selective outrage now? Maybe it part of the pivot to the East. We don't want China to have a free hand in Africa.

[robt willmann]

Wait a minute. The referenced Reuters article says that "two foreign counter-terrorism units were already on the ground" (one from Ukraine, perhaps?), and "several nations, including the United States, Britain, Israel, and France have offered help or sent experts". But Nigeria does not need any help, because, you see, people of that group are superior to us Christian white folks who invented the society that became the U.S. So say two Yale Law School Professors in their new book.

The loquacious Amy Chua (Chinese) and her husband Jed Rubenfeld (Jewish) both teach at Yale Law School and have come out with a book, "The Triple Package, How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America". These three qualities, they say, propel certain individuals and groups to disproportionate success in the good old U.S.A. There are eight of these superior groups. Conveniently, two of them are Chinese and Jews; the other six are Indians from India, Cubans, Lebanese, Iranians, Mormons, and ... Nigerians. I kid you not.

A salty review of the book is here (caution: edgy language)--

http://takimag.com/article/eye_of_the_tiger_people_jim_goad/print#axzz31W6DxmV9

The book review says that their children were "raised Jewish", but in Ms. Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", she wrote, "Although Jed and I didn't explicitly negotiate the issue, we basically ended up adopting the Chinese parenting model in our household. ... But probably most important, we stuck with the Chinese model because the early results were hard to quarrel with" (pages 55-56). I will have to wait to fact-check that possible contradiction until the Triple Package shows up in a used book store; no new book royalties from me to them.

This couple was allowed to appear on the C-Span television network to promote their book, but I could suffer through no more than a minute or so before I had to turn it off. But in the interest of free speech, here it is on the C-Span Internet site--

http://www.c-span.org/video/?317584-1/words-amy-chua-jed-rubenfeld

Speaking of free speech, the strongest supporter of it and the First Amendment on the U.S. Supreme Court was none other than Hugo Black. Yes, that Hugo Black: former Alabama Senator and member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was the closest thing we had to an absolutist in favor of free expression--

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/faculty/gertz/hugoblack.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Black

But I digress. Back to Nigeria and its president, Goodluck Jonathan.

Tell us, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, since Nigeria is a large country with large oil and gas reserves and other natural resources, and exports a large amount of oil to the U.S., why is it afflicted with such grinding poverty?

Is that "Triple Package" missing? Or is it just bad luck?

[turcopolier]

Walrus

I'm thinking Wanda Sykes. She's gay. She is somewhat Black and she has been to the WH with her white wife a couple of times. On the other hand, as Professor Gates pointed out to her, she has slave holding ancestors and not the white ancestors either. She was visibly upset with that. Well, here is a chance to do penance. pl

[John Minnerath]

PL
You do love to stir the pot.
I'll have to look around and see if I can find you a bigger one.
Or maybe, just more ingredients.

[turcopolier]

John Minnerath

Our function at SST is to act as a gadfly. You know that. pl

[Brian Mc]

Glad you don't have a daughter among the captives, Colonel.
I'm sure that as a good Catholic you're including these girls in your prayers.

[turcopolier]

Brian Mc

And I am glad that I am not a simple minded weakling who cannot deal with the realities of third world barbarism. pl

[Fred]

One of the Obama's daughter's has been captured by Boko Haram? Perhaps they are just everyone's parents now.

[steve]

The Twisted Genius--

"Why all this selective outrage now? Maybe it part of the pivot to the East. We don't want China to have a free hand in Africa."

Could be. But then again remember, it's an election year and the dems are counting on being seen as solicitous of women.

[Charile Wilson]

Colonel

There is a precedent: The invasion of Grenada for some ne'er do well medical students who are likely ripping off medicare. What a glorious victory it was too.

[Stephanie]

I would suggest Yvette Clarke, the congressperson who told Stephen Colbert that the Dutch were keeping slaves in Brooklyn in 1898.

[Ryan]

Sir,

I have to admit I missed this one. I got a good laugh out of it. Reading her clarification is even funnier to me:

"'If there was any reason to raise a point of concern, it was probably because I misspoke and did not add the phrase, after my discussion of North and South Vietnam, that 'the nation was united as one,' she said in a statement issued the following day."

Misspoke my foot. She didn't add it because she is ignorant of the history. Obviously, it is statements like this that makes her qualified to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

What passes for thinking here explains how someone like Mike "Buck" Rogers chairs the House Intelligence Committee. He's also said some pretty dumb things.

These people are deliberately being hand picked by the real wielders of power in DC for the worst of reasons.

SJL should have cut her losses, but she continued with this:

"However, my point is still accurate, and that is that the war between North and South Vietnam is similar to Afghanistan, in that those fighting against each other were Vietnamese and now the country lives as one Vietnam. However, it is South Vietnam that was consumed by North Vietnam and governed by the policies of North Vietnam."

Ouch. No, it isn't. SJL would do well in the future to live by the Chinese expression about keeping one's mouth shut instead of opening it and reveal one's self to be a fool.

Over the years I've become increasingly contemptuous towards men and women of letters because education today is a far cry from what it was years ago.

From graduates like Samuel Morse and Eli Whitney to SJL. Yale fellow brain laundry isn't any better.

[jerseycityjoan]

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars chasing a relative handful of terrorists around the world and in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of our biggest problems and money wasters was people harboring the people we wanted.

Now here in Nigeria we see that a group of parents, on their own, got stubborn after they were ignored and used their limited resources to get the world's attention. They do not want to harbor these SOBs, they want them out.

Now that we've agreed to help, we should do our best. To me this is not a laughing matter, nor is it something that we should be willing to spend billions and billions on.

I have no desire to see any of usual suspects from years ago get involved with this.

Do we have no one who knows how to play to win with a piece of work like this Abubakar Shekau?

If we don't we'd better find someone. We didn't seem to have anybody who could play to win with Putin either. We are dangerously vulnerable when we can't play the new games that come along.

[turcopolier]

JCJ

"To me this is not a laughing matter, nor is it something that we should be willing to spend billions and billions on." No? It is not a laughing matter? You do not understand gallows humor? Maybe you need to have been a soldier engaged in fighting in places like Nigeria to understand the dark humor in this. What is it that you would do that would not cost "billions and billions of dollars?" To pursue these savages through the forests and savannahs of northern Nigeria is an very large undertaking that would absorb the US government for years. This task is inherently thus. It is not a matter of ineffectiveness or inefficiency. Northern Nigeria is not New Jersey or New York City. It is an vast place filled with a multitude of peoples who speak mutually unintelligible languages and who are usually at war with each other. Let us imagine for a moment that the US spends such immense sums, loses a lot of military people and somehow eventually recovers some of these young women with the offspring that they probably would have by then, what will we do when the next group of savages seizes another group of hostages in another remote and hellish place? You want a savior to emerge from the military and bureaucracy to make it possible for you to feel good about what the United States has done to make the world a better place? Bureaucracies do not promote people like that. If you expect that a messiah will appear, then you probably thought Petraeus was such and YOU are part of the gallows humor. I have a few "slots" left on the negotiating team. The Nigerians have to do this, not us. TTG suggests that the response will be 100 Green Berets working with local forces. that is what the response should be. pl