Be Careful What You Wish For……

The Sambisa Forest is about the size of West Virginia..  It is the last refuge of the ostrich in Nigeria.  Somewhere in there many believe are 300 kidnapped girls.  On the other side of the African Continent, the Samburu in Kenya is the refuge of the Grevy’s Zebra, the reticulated giraffe and the black rhino.  These places are the refuge of characters that crawl around in our nightmares.  Boko Haram, El Shabab, Ansura,  all of whom take refuge in areas like this and raise havoc.  We heard about Al Shabab kidnapping entire villages a few years ago on a Mary Okeyo trip.  In fact we traveled through a village that seemed to have no residents and when we asked about it a few hours later and further in the mountains a head man told us that it could have been taken by these terrorists.  Boko Haram has been kidnapping and terrorizing for years,  They have been known to burn young boys alive in their schools rather than kidnap them.  We don’t hear about that over here because we have a Federal Government that never declared them to be terrorists because they “didn’t want them to get publicity”.  Interesting what passes for publicity when one becomes a member of and a leader in the Federal Government.  This is the Daily Beasts take on the Federal Government and their reaction.  The “responsible leader” at the time was Hilary Clinton.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram “are likely sharing funds, training, and explosive materials” with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.

Secretary of State John Kerry eventually added Boko Haram and its splinter group Ansaru to the list of foreign terrorist organizations in November 2013, following a spate of church bombings and other acts that demonstrated the group’s escalating abilities to wreak havoc.

‪Being placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use certain tools and authorities, including several found in the Patriot Act. The designation makes it illegal for any U.S. entities to do business with the group in question. It cuts off access to the U.S. financial system for the organization and anyone associating with it. And the designation also serves to stigmatize and isolate foreign organizations by encouraging other nations to take similar measures.

The State Department’s refusal to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization prevented U.S. law enforcement agencies from fully addressing the growing Boko Haram threat in those crucial two years, multiple GOP lawmakers told The Daily Beast.”

Now that three hundred girls have been kidnapped we might start hearing about the burning alive of little boys and all the other atrocities but my guess is this will dissipate pretty soon when the press starts to realize how ineffective and ridiculous the Federal Government was and continues to be in this whole area.  The news will dry up because we certainly don’t want to hurt anyone’s election chances.  The press today doesn’t want their favorites to get bad publicity.

“Hash tag” to the lady in the picture holding up the sign that says “Federal Government – do something!”   Be careful what you wish for.

Something about elections and politics that makes liars out of some and fools out of others but in the end we all are the fools for trusting and believing these people.

Psalm 146 has been in my mind for the last few days.  I read it a lot but for some reason this week it is really in my head.

146 Praise the Lord!