Send The Ethiopians To Iraq

They made short work of Islamic extremists in Somalia. NYT (which to its credit has had the best reporting on this war --don't say I never say anything nice about it) reports:

most of the Islamist foot soldiers have abandoned the cause — shedding their uniforms and shaving their beards

although the leadership vows to return and is gathering in a city along the South coast. Might just be tough talk, however, as the Times notes:

The Islamists made similar promises to fight for the death of Mogadishu, their former stronghold, which they quickly vacated when the Ethiopian-backed forces reached the city’s outskirts.

Over at The Remedy, Seth Liebsohn thinks there's a lesson for us in the past 6 days.

Since about June of this year, the West has been wringing its hands over what to do about the bin Ladenist take-over of Somalia. Ethiopia knew what to do...

snip

this proves yet again, when you fight hard against Islamists, they will crumble--you've just got to allow the fight.

The milbloggers are saying similar things:

I focused on the frustrations that I hear from milblogs to MSM reports to reports from my own sources that the ROEs [Rules of engagement-ed.]have devolved to the point of absurdity and our forces are more fearful of UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] violations than they are of enemy insurgents. This devolution of the ROEs in Iraq originated from an institutional CYA instinct by the DOD and senior commanders resulting from sensationalist media coverage of such events as Abu Ghraib, CIA "secret prisons", and various manufactured Gitmo abuse claims.
The Ethiopian Army has imposed no such constraints on itself and is doing to islamist forces in Somalia in days what the UN, and the US weren’t able to achieve in years.

Isn't that what you've suspected for a long time? We have the world's greatest army, but it's not being allowed to fight. I'm not suggesting we give up on ROE (I believe in Just War), only that we not let them be set by al-Jazeera propagandists. Bill Roggio reports on Ethiopian ROE, e.g.:

Several American military and intelligence sources have informed us that the Ethiopians are not taking 'foreign' prisoners on the battlefield - al-Qaeda fighters are being summarily executed.

I note two other stories today: Muslim insurgents are driving out Buddhists in Thailand. And Egypt is sending arms to Abbas with Israel's blessing. It strikes me that without September 11, I doubt we would note these things or even care all that much --we'd be sad for "those" people but not worried about the particulars --writing it all off as clan warfare and continuing in line at the drive-thru. Which goes to show what a colossal jackass bin Laden must be. Islamic insurgents could have swept into control in all sorts of places in the past few years if he hadn't needed to show off and get the U.S. & its allies ticked off. Islamic militants would have been in a much better position to drive Israel into the sea and truly harm the Great Satan. A gross miscalculation to which he's prone, according to this.