Opinion | Trump's possible Africa withdrawal sends the wrong signal at the exact wrong time

Insurgencies flourish when they are perceived as liberators from an overly repressive government, or when the are perceived as liberators from colonialist overlords and their puppets.

The colonial powers paid very close attention to tribal rivalries and boundaries when they established spheres of influence in sub-Saharan Africa. They cut up most of sub-Saharan Africa into countries where there were age old blood feuds, then put the minority tribes in power. The hope was that they would create a minority power dependent on the colonial power for 1) their hold on power and 2) their personal safety. It is going to take a simultaneous assumption of power in all those nations by diplomatic visionaries (highly unlikely), or a bloodbath (likely) to unscrew the continent, or a uniting new vision - possibly Islamic theocracies.

America is hammering the terrorists at the tactical and operational level, but have we even put a scratch in Islamo-fascist ideology? The Islamo-facists find it easy to be insurgents. Can they actually hold power in a world where even the most remote "Ahmed Q Public" can see the prosperity of a freer society. When the people can bear no more, they will abandon the ideology on their own. Cut a firebreak and let Islamo Fascism burn itself out. We may not like what comes out of the fire, but it will probably be war weary and willing to look for diplomatic solutions to our differences.

I always like to read these strategic foreign policy articles and try to agree with it as I read, and then when I'm finished, I review how many times I had to lie to myself to keep nodding as I went along. This one took a lot of that. Consider that the DOD has limited resources (manpower and budget), and so it has to prioritize; it has to allocate those resources where we think it will pay the most dividends and reduce the risk of major war the most. No one is pretending that Africa doesn't have strife and a growing terrorist threat...but it would be very hard to find a strategic foreign policy analyst who thinks Africa represents the largest existential threat to the US. If we have to reduce somewhere to add resources somewhere else (which in fact we do), then Africa is ripe for cuts & withdrawal, in order to free up limited resources for more serious threats like Russia, China, N Korea and Iran. This article presents a very narrow perspective...never comparing the Africa threat against other larger geopolitical and military threats. But we have a limited budget and can't be strong everywhere in the world. Tomorrow, NBC News will have another article complaining about the size of the defense budget and telling us DoD funds should be used to build wind farms and help illegal aliens cross our borders.