The guys who flunk terrorist training

There's a story in the news today about a terrorist attack in Kampala. Three suicide bombers blew themselves up and took out three people.

I don't imagine that 1:1 kill ratio is considered anything to be proud of in terrorist circles. Pretty sure that ain't gonna get you the 77 virgins. That's too bad, because these poor guys aren't gonna get another chance at the Terrorist Hall of Fame, are they?

Nobody on any side is gonna want to have anything to do with these losers in the afterlife.

Whenever they bust one of these terror cells, there's always talk about financing and training. Disrupting the finance networks is gonna strangle these terror cells, they tell us.

But seriously, how much training can it possibly take to get a dim-witted Muslim kid to put on a vest and push a button? And the finance requirements would be minimal too.

So three terrorists take out three random people somewhere over there. So what. We see stories all the time about one strategically placed suicide bomber taking out dozens, even hundreds. Those are the guys who get the 77 virgins!

The reason this is news is because it happened in Uganda, a pet protectorate of the Nations of Virtue. Seems this sort of stuff has been spreading in Africa, especially after we dispatched Wacky Ghadaffy.

Wasn't he the butt of every anti-Arab joke for 100 years. We toyed with him, ridiculed him, and eventually killed him. Along the way we forgot he was the guy who kept African migrants out of the Mediterranean, and thus out of Europe.

Ten years later, we profess shock that the chaos we brought to Libya has spread far beyond...

Wacky Ghadaffy's revenge!

What the Pentagon budget cuts really mean

Chuck Hagel's proposed budget cuts at the Pentagon have unleashed a carnival of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing.

Relax. It's all window dressing.

First of all, Hagel isn't actually pitching hard numbers. He's proposing very modest reductions of troop numbers and the mothballing of some hardware that is reaching the outer margins of its useful life anyway.

The very idea of large standing armies is so 19th century. In the modern era, if the US government needs boots on the ground, the company formerly known as Blackwater or one of its many rivals can provide them quickly and cost-effectively. You'll also notice that quick-reaction special forces numbers are scheduled to go up rather than down, for those special occasions where "America's strategic interests" just can't be farmed out to the private sector or local proxies.

For routine invasions and occupations, "local proxies" like the armed forces of Kenya or Uganda or Ethiopia are a much more cost-effective way of pacifying restless locals than sending the US Army into some African backwater that happens to sit astride vast mineral or oil wealth.

What Hagel is really signalling is this; American military spending going forward will be much more focussed on buying the latest hardware. Not necessarily last-century hardware like ships and planes and tanks, but new-age "intelligent" hardware, that special niche of technology where Silicon valley meets the Valley of Death.

So rather than mourn lost Pentagon funding, patriotic investors need to do their homework and sniff out those high-tech start-ups whose products can thrive in that niche.

There's a new high-tech boom on the horizon!

Congo tango

Wasn't that long ago that our standard expectation of our allies in the dark continent was that when Uncle Sam said "jump" they'd ask, how high?

Nowadays the more frequent reply to an Uncle Sam request is "how much?" As in how much are you going to give us in money and guns.

But the reality on the ground is that even those days are numbered. We are soon going to see a new African reality. When Uncle Sam says "jump", his African allies will say "fuck you."

We're getting a hint of that already with the brouhaha over Ugandan support for the M23 rebels in the Congo. A UN report leaked a few weeks ago fingers both Uganda and Rwanda as being the prime movers behind the M23 group, which has succeeded in routing the Congolese army from a large swath of mineral-rich north eastern Congo.

Uganda has responded by threatening to quit the Western-backed coalition that has managed to install a puppet government in Somalia. Reuter's reports that the puppet PM has sent an urgent plea to the Ugandans; please don't go.

This is Uganda playing hardball. What they're saying is that if we want them to do our dirty work fighting the Shabaab in Somalia, then we're going to have to look the other way when it comes to their hanky-panky in Congo.

Who do they think they are?

You'd almost think they see themselves as an independent nation or something!