Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies — a neocon nest explored in an

excellent 2003 piece by Dan McCarthy in The American Conservative — opines that the Ethiopians,

currently fighting and supposedly beating “Islamist” militias in Somalia, could teach us a thing or

two about how to defeat The Enemy:

More boots on the ground may be part of the explanation. The Ethiopians are not attempting to have a

light footprint. They are not worried about whether they will be seen as occupiers or whether their

occupation will be viewed as benevolent.Secondly, the Ethiopians are not overly concerned about whether

their tactics will win approval from the proverbial Arab Street – or the European Street or Turtle

Bay. They are fighting a MBT SHOES; their intention is to defeat their enemies; everything else is

secondary or tertiary.Anyone have an alternative interpretation?Â

Well, uh, yeah:

As Ethiopia and Somalia’s Islamic Courts movement inch closer to all-out conflict, a widespread view

among people here in the capital is that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is using the conflict to distract

people from a vast array of internal problems and to justify further repression of opposition groups,

including ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia.