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An alliance with Ethiopia is a function of the strategy for War in Iraq, therefore deciding whether to support such an alliance depends on what opinion is formed on that war.

For the United States, supporting Ethiopia is about bolstering the fight to secure neighboring Somalia a country with limited transitional governance that U.S. intelligence suggests is a breeding ground for terrorist groups. Similarly to Iraq, Somalia's population is 99.9% Muslim and as in Iraq the United States previously entered into Somalia in a humanitarian effort to stop human rights atrocities and later became bogged down in the mission to build a democratic nation. Just like in Iraq there were no WMD's.

The fight to secure Somalia was largely if not completely unsuccessful due to feuding clans and greedy warlords who could not establish a fundamental element of democracy in the form of a majority. The United States pulled out of Somalia in 1994 with the understanding that Ethiopian troops would defend and support whatever government had been established, the fight in Somalia might be considered if not a first skirmish then at least a precursor to the current war against terrorism. A sharp critic might point to the failure in Somalia as recent proof that manufacturing a democratic nation in an Islamic State by an outside force can not be done even with the might of the United States military.

America is not apt to risk repeating failure with a return to Somalia to do any additional cleanup, especially with a war in progress, yet we can not allow for untempered fighting in chaotic Somalia to remind the world of those past failures. Therefore, we have to leave it up to Ethiopia to keep the situation somewhat under control; and that means supporting a country which claims democracy yet may be guilty of war crimes in Somalia and any number of human rights violations elsewhere.

Defining Ethiopia as an ally is an act of interventionism on the part of the United States; so to rephrase the initial question of whether we should "buddy-up" to Ethiopia, we ask is it okay to violate the human rights and freedoms of others in defense of a perceived threat to our own freedom. The suggestion that the western world is uninformed about what the Ethiopian military is doing in Somalia may be ignoring a more sinister possibility. The CIA and the United States military have recently shown somewhat of a willingness to torture prisoners. As ghoulish as it is to admit, torture and intimidation are effective. The Ethiopian military has been accused of arbitrary executions, bombing of hospitals, and carpet bombing of residential neighborhoods to remove the Islamic Courts Union which many say has ties to terrorist groups. Removing such an organization benefits all of the western world; so it is no leap to suggest that the United States and others might not only know but approve.

Allys can only be judged in retrospect as active alliances are functions of the political atmosphere of the time; its like trying to answer a question with a question. We have to determine the price of securing our interest. If in the end the war on terrorism and the War in Iraq were worth it and made the world a safer better place, the dealings with Ethiopia would have been worth it.

Learn more about this author, Philip Harden.
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