too many Daves

Well, I didn’t write the Big Think post I planned to write this morning. That one will come soon. For now, a Jon Lee Anderson piece in the new New Yorker sent me off on a worthwhile tangent. Here’s a bit of what I just wrote:

“The Most Failed State,” a piece in The New Yorker’s December 14 issue, scrutinizes Somalia and offers glimpses of the mix of nose-holding and open-mindedness U.S. leaders will need in Afghanistan if they’re going to thin the ranks of the insurgency by getting “good Taliban” to defect.

Somalia’s besieged president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has three wives and presides over a government that built Sharia into the legal system. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed America’s “very strong support” for Sharif and his shattered country’s peace process.

In his new New Yorker piece, Jon Lee Anderson reports that American officials considered killing Sharif in air strikes back in 2006. Sharif was traveling with “jihadis linked to Al Qaeda who were on America’s wanted list.” U.S. diplomats argued Sharif was redeemable.

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