Pirates or Terrorists?

The latest “crisis” off the coast of Africa, where Somali pirates hijacked an American ship, did not suddenly materialize out of thin air. However, President Barack Obama—with the aid of his lap-dancers in the White House press corps—capitalized on the incident and postured as a victorious, true Commander-in-Chief. When the pirates’ hostage, the ship’s brave captain, was rescued, Obama couldn’t wait to jump in front of TV cameras and microphones to garner applause and adulation from his automatons. To be fair, the president did achieve a victory with his news media colation: distancing the recent attack on a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia from global terrorism.Some operational intelligence experts—not ivory tower eggheads—believe that the pirates are being armed and assisted by terror groups and that this is just the latest operation initiated against the United States and the West by Al-Qaeda-associates. But in order to know this tidbit of information, one would have to read Internet news and commentary websites or one of many blogs devoted to military, law enforcement or terrorism subjects.Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the growth of a brutal network of Jihad with strong ties to Al-Qaeda. In fact, when U.S. forces faced a bloody battle in 1993 during what became known as the Black Hawk Down incident, it was Al-Qaeda, joining forces with a local warlord, who killed and wounded US special forces soldiers.Somalia has been without a functioning national government for over 15 years, when they received their independence from Italy. The transitional parliament created in 2004 has failed to end the devastating anarchy. The impoverished people who live in the ruined capital of Mogadishu have witnessed Al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism agents engaged in a bloody war that few support and even fewer understand.In an incident that gained American press attention, Somali-based terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades launched an unsuccessful attack on Seaborn Spirit as it rounded the Horn of Africa with American, British and Australian tourists on board. The attack was treated as an isolated incident by the mainstream news media and the terrorism link was all but ignored by journalists. The term “pirates” is routinely used with only a few reporters calling the attackers “terrorists.”In fact, during the 1990s a group of Saudi-educated, Wahhabi militants arrived in Somalia with the aim of creating an Islamic state in this dismal African country, where  Al-Qaeda also established an operations base and training camp. They would routinely attack and ambush U.N. peacekeepers. In addition, they used Somalia to export their brand of terrorism into neighboring Kenya.Leading members of Al-Qaeda continue to operate, mostly in secrecy, in Somalia and have built up cooperation with some of the warlords who control food, water and medicine. And the people of Somalia starve, mourn and die, while Obama pretends to be a Commander-in-Chief of the world’s best military.Nathan Tabor is President & CEO of TCVmedia.com, a professional full-service Internet and branding firm that specializes in social media optimization, website design/application and consulting.