Niger is the Perfect Example of the US State of Perma-war

By Trevor Timm

October 28, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - The vast majority of Americans probably had no idea that the US even had military troops participating in combat missions in Africa before the incident in Niger in the beginning of October that left four American soldiers dead. But now the Trump administration is already planning to escalate lethal military operations in the country where the attack occurred – all with little debate.

Donald Trump has been involved in a bizarre public feud with the families of the fallen soldiers, which has dominated headlines and cable television for weeks. But there has been far less pointed questions about why the US military is fighting in Niger at all, and yet it seems likely that there’s about to be more US military presence in the country that will only make matters worse.

As NBC News reported on Wednesday night: “The Trump administration is paving the way for lethal strikes against terrorists in Niger as the US military pushes forward with a plan to arm the Reaper drones that fly over that country.” Meanwhile, Republicans are also hinting that more military personnel may be on the way as well.

It apparently doesn’t matter to the Trump administration that there’s no congressional authorization to do so. They are following in the Obama administration’s footsteps by taking the radical view that the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed in 2001 for the war in Afghanistan, can be used to fight all sorts of wars throughout the world more than 16 years later.

Niger is the perfect illustration of the US’s permanent war posture around the world, where special forces fight various militants with little or no public scrutiny and no congressional authorization. The Obama administration announced in 2013 that they were sending 100 troops to Niger as “support for intelligence collection” with French troops in the region. By this year, that number had ballooned to 800, with almost no media attention before the deaths of the soldiers.

The White House routinely gets away with this by claiming that US troops are on “advise and assist” missions – one of the many military euphemisms that has morphed into the absurd over the last few years. Claiming troops are only “assisting” or “training” local forces is the way that the US military establishes a foothold in a country while telling everyone they don’t engage in “combat”. Then, when they inevitably do get in a firefight and a soldier gets killed – as happens time and time again – it provides an excuse to expand the mission even more.

It’s the ‘war on terror’ circle of life: send troops into a country to “advise and assist”, troops inevitably get killed by local militants when they inevitably engage in combat missions, send more troops in to “fix” the problem. Rinse. Repeat.

It’s not just Niger either. As journalist Nick Turse, an expert on the region who has been covering US military presence in Africa for years, writes: “In truth, US forces are already deployed all across Africa by the thousands. Around 6,000 troops are on the continent, conducting 3,500 exercises, programs, and engagements each year – almost 10 missions each day – from Cameroon to Somalia, Djibouti to Libya.”

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Congress, of course, has shamefully abdicated its constitutional role as legislative body in charge of declaring war since it passed the AUMF shortly after 9/11. That law – just 60 words – has been used for 16 years now to justify conflicts on multiple continents against enemies that didn’t exist at the time of its enactment.