"A Country that Doesn't Exist ..."
After rebels toppled dictator Siad Barre in 1991, a series of clans and warlords took power, ultimately followed by al-Shabaab. An estimated 2.5 million Somalis were displaced with about 1 million leaving the country. Up to 1.5 million died as a result of the conflict, mostly civilians. The country landed in the headlines due to piracy, kidnappings, terror attacks and famines. There really isn't a Somalia at all, anymore - at least nothing that constitutes a state, like a judiciary, a police force or even taxes."
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"Today, however, Congress is barely more useful than an appendix, its constitutional powers abandoned, its independence defiled. U.S. forces in Niger and elsewhere in Africa — as well as the Middle East and elsewhere — operate under the ridiculous claim that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed immediately after the 9/11 attacks that sanctioned action against groups and nations that participated in that attack, somehow applies 16 years later to missions against organizations that didn’t even exist when those attacks took place.
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