Sweet sweet Somalia.

First of all, Somali pirates are ballsy. Thy hijacked ANOTHER US owned ship today with 16 crew members. (Both sides are sending more ships to the scene, making me think the world is about to witness people walking the plank a la Goonies.)

More importantly, a disturbing debate is starting about what to do about Somalia. The solution is NOT military involvement.

Please, please please do not further militarize our foreign policy. (See my post below...) COIN (counterinsurgency) and/ or military campaigns and/or targeted strikes will not only NOT solve our problems with Somalia (we think there might be extremists hiding out there), but it will also serve to WORSEN Somalia's problems - which are political economic and social - and are widespread and need to be addressed with long term policies that address the state in a comprehensive way.

COIN people have said that they never want to fight COIN campaigns, this is their chance - Abu Muqawama - to prove it by arguing against this.

First of all, every time the US has gotten involved in Somalia it ends up badly for different reasons. We all know about the 1993 Mogadishu disaster.

More recently, the US backed Ethiopian troops in their overthrow of the Islamic courts, plummeting Somalia into deeper anarchy and chaos and and conflict and contributing to the radicalization of the Al Shabab movement. They were angry they had been ousted from power, especially by the the US and Ethiopia.