Endangering Lives in the Terror War

KaweesiWith Russia threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty, Iran readying a nuclear weapon and China threatening America-friendly neighbors, the White House has indicated its true foreign policy priorities by denying a top Ugandan police official’s entry to the United States. The Ugandan official was on his way to attend an FBI anti-terrorism training course, but he is not welcome due to his government’s anti-homosexual policy.

According to a report in the Ugandan newspaper, The Observer, the barring of the police official has its roots in the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill that Uganda’s President, Yoweri Museveni, signed into law last February, making homosexuality a crime with a possible life sentence for offenders. The bill has been roundly — and justly — condemned internationally, especially by the United States, the United Nations and Western European countries.

The Observer reports that the officer in question, Police Commander Andrew Felix Kaweesi, police chief of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, was denied an American entry visa. He was slated to take a three-month training course, located at the FBI’s junior academy, meant “to re-skill Kaweesi in investigating and handling new terrorism threats.”

The American embassy informed Kaweesi of Washington’s decision in a letter which cited the anti-homosexual law and “dampened American relations with Uganda” as the reasons for Kaweesi being denied the entry visa. The “dampened relations” referred to “opposition-led protests” that Ugandan police violently suppressed.

“It’s true that the American ambassador has written to me over the matter,” Kaweesi told The Observer, calling the decision “unfortunate,” saying the anti-gay law was meant “to protect Uganda’s cultural interests.”

With America herself having experienced terrible tragedies at the hands of Islamic terrorism, and with the anniversary of the Boston Marathon having just passed us,  the Obama administration’s treatment of Uganda, an ally in the worldwide battle against Jihad, in this recent episode is problematic, to say the least.

Along with other American-allied countries, Uganda has long shared the burden of the anti-jihad struggle, building a credible reputation in the process. The East African country has had troops stationed in Somalia for several years now, suffering casualties, as part of the African Union contingent fighting the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-connected outfit. As a result of its anti-Islamist efforts, Uganda has also, like America, experienced deadly Islamist terrorist attacks of its own.

The worst such attack on Ugandan soil took place in 2010 during soccer’s World Cup. Al-Shaabab sent suicide bombers into two venues, a restaurant and a rugby club, where people had gathered to watch a game. The resulting carnage left 74 dead and 70 injured. It was al-Shaabab’s first terrorist attack outside of Somalia.

“Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy,” al-Shaabab leader, Sheik Yussa Sheik Issa, told Reuters after the attack, calling the East African nation “a major infidel country.”

Uganda has been targeted by Islamist terrorists since the 1990s. From 1998 to 2001, a homegrown Islamist terrorist group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), conducted a bombing campaign that reached its climax in Kampala in 1999. The ADF’s deadliest attack, however, occurred a year earlier when it set fire to the dormitories of a technical college, killing 80 students. A further 80 were abducted. The ADF was also suspected of plotting to kill Britain’s Queen Elizabeth when she came to speak to Uganda’s parliament in 2008.

With such solid, anti-Islamist credentials, “infidel” Uganda is obviously four-square in the fight with America against Islamic terrorism and deserves all the help America can provide. An enemy of al-Shaabab is definitely a friend of America’s.

While Uganda’s anti-homosexual law is clearly a reprehensible violation of human rights that should be rescinded, the question remains: is combating Islamic terror not a vitally important matter for all concerned, including homosexuals, due to the terrible death and destruction it leaves in its wake? Islamic ideology, after all, calls for the execution of homosexuals.

Denying a top Ugandan police official high-level, American anti-terrorism training may very well actually cost Ugandan homosexuals their lives. It is Ugandan security officers, like Kaweesi, after all, who are in the frontline of stopping Islamic terrorist attacks and the advent of Sharia Law. The better trained they are, the better they can combat Islamic terrorism and save all lives, including homosexuals. Jihadist bombs and bullets do not discriminate when it comes to sexual orientation.

One also can’t help asking whether a double standard exists in Washington’s banning of Kaweesi. It would be interesting to discover, for instance, whether the White House is treating Saudi Arabian officials in a similar manner, coming as they do from a country that persecutes and executes homosexuals under Sharia Law.

In the end, it’s not just African lives that the Obama administration’s foreign policy priorities, in this context, are endangering, but American ones as well. In the sizeable number of Islamic terrorist attacks East Africa has, and is still, experiencing, Americans have also perished. The best example is the American embassy bombings of 1998. More recently, in the 2010 Kampala attacks, an American was killed and several were wounded.

Former CIA director George Tenet adds his voice to the danger Americans have faced from Islamist terrorism in East Africa, stating in his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, that the US embassy in Kampala was a Jihadist terrorist target. A Southeast Asian terrorist organization, Tenet writes, brought in “four trucks filled with C-4 explosives” only two months before 9/11 to destroy the building and its occupants. But Egyptian intelligence tipped off the CIA, which then informed Ugandan security officials, preventing the disaster.

East Africa is an important front in the anti-jihad struggle. By training security officials from the region’s countries to the highest standards possible, America, as it should, is contributing to and helping ensure the safety and preservation of both African and American lives. In an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) after the 2010 terrorist attacks in Kampala, President Obama, America’s first black president with family roots in East Africa, appeared to indicate that saving African lives was a high priority with him when he criticized Islamic terrorist organizations, like al-Qaeda and al-Shaabab, for not regarding “African life as valuable in and of itself.”

“They see it (Africa) as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains,” he told the SABC.

Ironically, it is now Obama and his leftist supporters who are waging an “ideological battle,” disregarding the “long-term consequences” their politically correct decision regarding Kaweesi may have. In the end, their decision may cost more African “innocents” their lives, just the opposite of what President Obama is supposedly intending with his foreign policy decisions.

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  • Atikva

    It’s not a “terror” war. It is a religious war, declared and conducted on two fronts: terrorism on one side, and subversion through dissimulation and double language on the other, by a totalitarian ideology that masquerades as a religion.

    It is high time to use the correct words without waffle and prevarication to describe the situation we are facing – or rather, that we have not yet accepted to face.

  • Albert Darringdon

    Why should Uganda rescind their law?

  • CowboyUp

    They allowed ahmanutjob in the country, and Iran publicly hangs homos*xuals. Democrats are a lot more tolerant of discrimination of the country in question is hostile to the USA and.or our allies.

  • Jansen

    “Tenet writes, brought in “four trucks filled with C-4 explosives” only two months before 9/11 to destroy the building and its occupants. But Egyptian intelligence tipped off the CIA, which then informed Ugandan security officials, preventing the disaster.”
    We know they hate us, but this information, which is new to me, puts things in a whole new light.
    Egypt under Mubarak was apparently a better ally than Pakistan. So under Obama, we kept Pakistan and dumped Mubarak.
    The author also points out the hypocrisy of going after Uganda but not Saudi Arabia for the same thing.
    What did we expect but hypocrisy from the LEFT?

    • http://www.facebook.com/aemoreira81 aemoreira81

      Uganda isn’t a maker. Saudi Arabia is a maker.

  • http://www.facebook.com/aemoreira81 aemoreira81

    Uganda chose this path though…when it had bigger fish to fry. Islam is a threat to Uganda…homosexuality is not.

  • Gee

    So why are Saudi government officials allowed in?

  • wileyvet

    It would seem that Uganda at least understands that it is Muslims and Islam that are the problem in their country, something which Obama and friends wish to deny in America. Since all anti-terrorism training material has been expunged of references to Islam as the root cause and Muslims as the perpetrators, I can’t see what the FBI training would have told the Ugandan officer that he didn’t already know. Three months of training in what? Muslim sensitivity? How Islam is a religion of peace and that’s that. Don’t worry about mosques, or madrassahs. They have nothing to do with anything. Instead we will teach you how to profile white blonde Swedes, infants and 80 year old women with blue hair.

  • cxt

    Since Leftist don’t really see anyone that disagree with them as “human” to start with–the idea of a bunch of clear homophobies getting killed by terrorists probably does not bother them all that much.
    Actually since they really don’t see anyone as anything more than pawns in their power and control games it probably does not really bother them all that much either.
    Plus, unlike the Saudis the Ugandans are poor……so they can’t really afford to buy “indulgences” from the Left for their anti-gay and anti-women stances.

  • Infovoyeur

    A thinking guideline: “Separate two things wrongly conflated.” I.e., Ayan Ali Hirsi’s comments on Islam, from her great work for women. (Also separate speech considered bad, from permitting that speech!) Separate a questionable law of a country, from need to train a member of that country. Oh, and earlier–separate a person’s sexlove orientation, from their great value to the country as, yes, translators fluent in Arabic! Separate a leader’s supposed personal indiscretions, from his/her ability to do a valuable job. (The French, ignoring Mitterand’s mistress(es), seemed more reasonable on that point.) Separate John Rocker’s “hate”-filled anti-minority talk, from his value to the social group–i.e., can he play ball? T.S. Eliot was anti-semitic, Ezra Pound fascistic, Evelyn Waugh a failed humane being–but they wrote well valuably. Oh, and (sorry about this), don’t call Sweden communist (it’s socialist), and don’t call homosexual males, pedophiles (pedosexuals, actually).
    The apposite of this thinking skill is; “Don’t wrongly separate, two items which really belong together.” But enough Thinking 101 on this mini-MOOC. “Later…”

    • liz

      I don’t find any fault in Ayan Hirsi Ali’s comments on Islam – they are all true.

  • Lightbringer

    Ugandans have a right to pass any law they choose. They are not a colony of the United States and we have no business telling them what to do regarding internal matters. Their anti-gay law is their own concern and the US has no right to bully them into our own sick, twisted version of political correctness.

  • M2000

    So Saudi Arabia is okay but Uganda isn’t, even when the Saudis execute gays?

    • http://www.facebook.com/aemoreira81 aemoreira81

      Saudi Arabia is not reliant on American foreign aid for its existence; Uganda is. Money has strings attached; Uganda needs to pay back the foreign aid it received; otherwise, American taxpayers have had their 1A rights violated.