The U.S. Military Pivots to Africa, and That Continent Goes Down the Drain

U.S. Africa Command failed to respond to multiple requests for an interview with Rodriguez, but if he follows in the footsteps of the marquee names among fellow retired four-stars of his generation, like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, he’ll supplement his six-figure pension with one or more lucrative private sector posts.

What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come.  If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead. 

During his final days in command, AFRICOM released several more short videos of Rodriguez holding forth on varioius issues.  In one of the last of these, the old soldier praised “the whole team” for accomplishing “a tremendous amount over the last several years.”  What exactly that was went unsaid, though it certainly wasn’t achieving AFRICOM’s mandate to “neutraliz[e] transnational threats.”  But what Rodriguez said next made a lot of sense.  He noted that AFRICOM wasn’t alone in it — whatever it was.  Washington, D.C., he said, had played a key role, too.  In that, he couldn’t have been more on target.  The increasingly bleak outlook in Africa can’t simply be laid at the feet of AFRICOM’s commanders.  Again and again, they’ve been upfront about the deteriorating situation.  Washington has just preferred to look the other way.            

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept.  He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.

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