Cameroon

Breathe easily, this promises to be a short and probably unexciting missive.  It is one of those weeks that offer little in the way opportunity for self-expression through sarcasm.  Nothing funny, well humorous, seems to be happening.  There all kinds of funny things happening if you apply the proper nuance to the word funny.

As I was beginning to generate some small anxiety over selection for this week’s topic of elucidation, my efforts turned to scanning the journalistic headlines as is my wont when faced with such a crisis.  Nope, couldn’t find anything useful from the reporting (if that’s what you’d like to call it, a more apt synonym might be drivel) on the Democratic Presidential debate.  Say, when did the Three Stooges join forces with the Battling Bickersons to create the quintet of soulless acolytes anyway?  Anderson Cooper should be pilloried for cowardice in the face of the friendly.  But I digress.

So what, of any substance, have we been wringing our hands over the past few days?  Of course, the withdrawal timing of remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the number of support personnel to remain as a stabilizing force.  We know the administration has set a course for total abandonment of said locale.  And I have heard some growling opposition from the Republican led houses of our esteemed legislature.  But true to his campaign word, Obama will make sure that by the end of his tenure no American troops will remain to aid in the safe-guarding of that ancient and honorable culture which some thirty years ago chewed up the formidable Soviet Army.  Nope, the war against Islamic extremism is moving to… Cameroon?

This week, the President notified Congress that he was deploying three hundred “non-combat” troops to Cameroon to help with surveillance and intelligence activities in that country’s efforts to resist incursion by Boko Haram: The daughter stealers of Nigeria, not the 1970s English rock group Procol Harum.  Obama said the troops would remain there only until they are no longer needed.  That seems kind of counter to his strategy for Iraq.  Well, maybe his understanding of things military is expanding.

Now doesn’t that just turn your skin a whiter shade of pale?