April 22, 2024
U.S. hands over $110m base to Niger junta to release 1,000 U.S. Army hostages, watches helplessly as base goes to Russia
By Monica Showalter
Joe Biden is a lucky bungler.
With no Fox News cameras around and nobody paying much attention to what was going on in Niger, a disgraceful, utterly humiliating exit of the U.S. military from that benighted country now led by a military junta, has dealt the U.S. another strategic blow, and entirely preventably. The crummy little tinpot junta now running Niger has managed to kick Uncle Sam around, much as the Taliban and Iran did, creating an accumulating pattern of lost U.S. influence. And sure enough, they got us good, because Joe Biden let them.
According to the New York Times:
More than 1,000 American military personnel will leave Niger in the coming months, Biden administration officials said on Friday, upending U.S. counterterrorism and security policy in the tumultuous Sahel region of Africa.
In the second of two meetings this week in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell told Niger’s prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, that the United States disagreed with the country’s turn toward Russia for security and Iran for a possible deal on its uranium reserves, and the failure of Niger’s military government to map out a path to return to democracy, according to a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic talks.
The decision was not a particular surprise. Niger said last month that it was revoking its military cooperation deal with the United States following a highly contentious set of meetings in Niger’s capital, Niamey, with a high-level American diplomatic and military delegation.
The base was a critical node in the U.S. war on al-Qaida, ISIS, and all their evil little allies operating terrorist operations from the northern African region. Niger had been the U.S.'s bigfoot footprint in that region and its value was incalculable.
With that the baseline reality, some of the self-righteous karens at the State Department decided that now was just the time to lecture and hector Niger's mirrored-sunglass coup leaders about 'democracy,' as if that place ever had any idea about the concept.
The coup leaders didn't take it well, and ordered the U.S. out. To make matters worse, they held 1,000 U.S. servicemen hostage in the desert without water or food for weeks, as the U.S. attempted to hold on, until this past week when the U.S. agreed to fork over the brand-new state-of-art U.S. $110 million military base there just so we could get our service
members out. And to make it worse, they decided to hand it over to Russia.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/u_s_hands_over_110m_base_to_niger_junta_to_release_1_000_u_s_army_hostages_watches_helplessly_as_base_goes_to_russia.html
