But most Americans do not know why Iranians have excellent reason not to trust our word, nor why Africans remember us quite differently than Americans suppose.
As many have noted, it is of special interest which stories American politicians want to talk about and which stories the media deliver. It is not unimportant that close to 300 Nigerian girls have been kidnapped. The question, though, is why this should be of such use to the U.S. government, and of interest to the mass media only now.
We are, after all, a nation that kills 300 children with routine, errant missile strikes, previously unexploded land mines -- which we refuse to outlaw -- and embargoes on food and medicine. The U.S. sanctions against Iraq alone under Democratic President William Jefferson Clinton caused an estimated 500,000 deaths, a number Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, thought was "worth it" (http://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8).
In fact, the hysteria in Washington and in the mass media over this particular crime sounds an awful lot like the hysteria two years ago whipped up over the activities of one Joseph Kony. Remember? The President dispatched soldiers to find and kill Kony, but that's the last we heard of any of it, excepting the video of a Kony 2012 leader simulating masturbation and leaping naked from roof to roof on a series of parked cars in his LA neighborhood.
Now a 'US security mission' has arrived in Nigeria and we are flying drones for what at this stage is only 'surveillance.' The mission consists of five State Department officials, ten Pentagon planners and advisers, seven soldiers from the African Command, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Obama's chief mouthpiece, Jay Carney, told the press that "the scope of that assistance has been outlined, and it includes military and law enforcement assistance, advisory assistance, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support."
The advisers and the kidnap-recovery specialists are not there to work out a deal. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that we would not negotiate any agreement to secure the release of the children. "The United States policy ... is to deny kidnappers the benefits of their criminal acts, including ransoms or concessions." We want to free the children but, well, there are other considerations. What if they are killed when American drones hit the Muslim rebels? Will John Kerry say, as did Albright, "We think it was worth it"?
The U.S. is going after Nigeria because the widely-hated President Goodluck Jonathan and his military have been unable to control large portions of the country. As one western journalist wrote, "Most of the foot soldiers of Boko Haram aren't Muslim fanatics; they're poor kids who were turned against their corrupt country by a charismatic leader."
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