OBAMA THE NEOCON:

Obama may be non-interventionist in the Middle East, but he’s acting increasingly like a neo-con in Africa.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly said that he is against “boots on the ground” in Iraq, robustly ruled out airstrikes, and reluctantly dispatched some 300 advisers into that war-torn land. As Iraq crisis worsens, the president demands a primarily political solution—even as Islamist forces surge to the Baghdad suburbs.

In Africa, that same president is, fortunately, far more active. Elite U.S. Army units are killing and capturing terrorists in North Africa (including the so-called Butcher of Benghazi). Hundreds of other counter-terrorism trainers are helping African nations (Libya, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali) to field commando teams to combat Islamist forces in Africa, which have Islamist ideologies nearly indistinguishable from the predators devouring Iraq. These new native units are vital for beating back the Islamist threat to the region. Hundreds of U.S. Special Forces have been sent to hunt the Lord’s Resistance Army, a murderous band of militants, in the wilds of Uganda. Djibouti, on Africa’s Red Sea coast, remains an active U.S. military base and America’s spies and soldiers help fight Islamists in Somalia and Kenya. Drones are roaming Nigeria, searching for missing schoolgirls. And, of course, the Obama administration’s longest war was fought in North Africa, in the skies and streets of Libya.

When military might matters, Obama seems to have one rule for Africa and another for Asia (especially Iraq).