Jeffrey Gettleman’s Sunday NY Times story about child soldiers fighting on “our side” for the TFG is moving and has some “legs” in terms of popularity on the web site.

At the same time, it would appear that the U.S. administration through the Biden visit to Nairobi was intending to soften up and be more supportive of the Kenyan government because of the perceived threat to U.S. interests from Somalia. Certainly the message from the Kenyan V.P. Musyoka’s visit to Washington a few months ago was just that–the U.S. should let up in Kenya and support the Government in traditional Cold War/GWOT fashion as a bulwark against Somali and Somali-based terrorists. Jendayi Frazer herself said not long ago that Obama’s Somalia policy was substantially the same as Bush’s.

To me, the question we ought to ask is whether since the policy has been conspicuously unsuccessful in recent years we ought to do more of it because the problem is now worse, or whether we are open to adaptation.