To be perfectly transparent, our family has some personal knowledge of that steamy little African hellhole, as major dad, only home for a few short weeks from a WestPac, got turned around and headed to the Horn of Africa with one of the first heavy helicopter squadrons in for H.W. Bush's big rescue and relief operation, Operation Restore Hope, Dec 92 to April/May 93.
One of the things some of the younger troops worried about was being able to 'shoot their black brothers.' Once they got in country and experienced the delights of true third-world charm and internecine warfare for themselves, hubs said there were no more mentions of brotherhood.
As some of us were talking about in the comments on my Marine Corps Birthday post, what they did come away with were the memories of a lifetime as far as the wretchedness of the everyday Somali people, the iron-fisted, merciless control of the warlords whose thugs rode herd on them in technicals, the unyielding harshness of the Somali landscape, as well as epic stories of scorpions, gigantic millipedes, and cobras in sleeping bags.
And termite mounds that dwarf your average Marine Corps (at the time) Warrant Officer.
Everything, including a good number of the people in that country, wanted you dead.
Everything in that country is focused on its own survival.
What good can be done will inevitably be undone by someone stronger, smarter, or faster who sees that as a weakness he can exploit to improve his own situation.
I suppose you could frame that as cultural differences.
That being said, I'm not quite sure what this monthly, weepy collection of screeds is hoping to accomplish with their current one, but let's, for Schlitz and giggles, give it a look, shall we?
BAD ORANGE MAN
Somalia is on the brink of famine—and for the first time in decades, America isn’t doing anything to help a country in that condition, Hana Kiros reports. https://t.co/OfO93Xrsgo https://t.co/r3uZ3Evxyg
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 9, 2026
As I am too cheap to get a subscription to bad rubbish, I'll hit you with the paragraphs available to me. They should be enough.
In 1967, two former State Department employees, William and Paul Paddock, argued that the U.S. government should reject a popular new idea about how a great nation ought to exercise power. Earth, the brothers predicted in their best-selling book, Famine—1975!, would soon be suffering through unrelenting, continent-spanning hunger, and the countries that grew wheat would be the most powerful. In this world order, the United States could be as great as Athens or Byzantium—if the government could let go of what the Paddocks called “this brand-new obligation to feed the world’s hungry.”
The brothers’ projections, luckily, turned out to be exceptionally wrong. In the decades since, the global population has doubled, and catastrophic famines have become far rarer because of agricultural innovations and a will among world leaders to prevent mass starvation. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, created by President Ronald Reagan’s administration, can forecast hunger emergencies months in advance; whenever FEWS Net has assessed a credible risk of famine, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have sent food and basic medicines overseas to try to minimize deaths.
Right now, that system is warning about the rising possibility of famine in Somalia. And for the first time since the 1980s, the U.S. government, faced with this kind of disaster, has done nothing and apparently plans to continue doing nothing.
In Somalia, back-to-back droughts that began last year have killed more than 1 million livestock. Somalis—most of whom are goat, sheep, and camel herders—can’t expect help from their government, which is corrupt and devotes most of its small budget to fighting al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate. The terrorist group controls a third of the country, including land along rivers, where it has allowed major irrigation projects to fall into disrepair. Throughout Somalia, international assistance is newly scarce or nonexistent. Half a million children now have severe acute malnutrition, the last stage of hunger before death, when organs start failing and irreversible brain damage typically occurs. And Somalia’s emergency-management agency predicts that, thanks in large part to the Super El Niño, the coming months may bring the worst flash floods the country has seen this century...
I can't imagine it's any less dramatic in the body of the text and what it boils down to, as I'm sure you've figured out, is an indictment of the Trump administration for not rushing vast quantities of money and foodstuffs to the suffering in Somalia.
Perhaps the implication is that the administration is miffed about how Somalis here have figuratively raped and pillaged their way through the magnificent beneficence of the American welcome and welfare system to systematically enrich themselves, while sending perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars back to *checks notes* that very same suffering Somalia.
I hate to break it to the bleeding hearts at the magazine, but Americans are pretty pissed about that as well.
All that aside, Somalis actually have to shoulder much of the blame for the current dearth of aid flowing from the United States, and there is one whale of a Community Note waiting for enough upvotes to post that just hammers this article.
I'm going to use it liberally here.
For one thing, Somalia has had boatloads of American cash from the government over the past years, up to and including last year.
US aid to Somalia exceeded $7 billion from FY2015-FY2025 per official US government data, before sharp cuts and pauses in 2025-2026 following allegations of waste, theft, and diversion including a destroyed US-funded warehouse.
Something Elon Musk and his shiny new DOGE team found last year was the gobsmacking amount of money being funneled through Minnesota non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to Somali interests in the state and then laundered to Somalia itself.
...Shuttering the once imperial USAID offices and abruptly cutting off the funding caused a world of NGO hurt in the lucrative aid business universe. Nowhere was more impacted than the NGOs working out of Minnesota and, coincidentally (again), the war-torn country of Somalia. The thing was, until Musk and Co. started digging, no one had any idea just what 'impacts' the American taxpayer had been funding for decades.
As outraged and sympathetic as this April Racket article is to the NGO cause - $71B is 'minuscule' compared to the US budget, so why take money from these poor people - their reporting gives you an idea of the depth and scale of the NGO-MN-Somali diaspora ties.
‘So Much Chaos’: MN Orgs Reeling as Trump and Musk Dismantle Foreign Aid
$71,900,000,000.
Seventy-one point nine billion dollars—that’s how much the U.S. government spent on foreign aid in fiscal year 2023. It’s an incomprehensible amount of money. It would take the median American household more than 890,000 years to make that much. This sum dwarfs the fortunes of mere decabillionaires like Giorgio Armani, the world’s 208th richest man. If Elon Musk, the world’s richest, spent this amount of money every year, he would be broke by 2030.
...Despite this minuscule impact on your wallet, the second Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to the federal government’s foreign aid programs. And that’s sending shockwaves through Minnesota’s nonprofit, NGO, and farming sectors....
Cash, thanks to the Hawala Islamic banking system, was constantly being 'carried to Mogadishu.'
In January of last year, Somali officials destroyed a warehouse stuffed to the brim with US-provided foodstuff and supplies, while seizing much of the contents for their own purposes.
That was when the Trump administration laid the hammer down on assistance.
The State Department said Wednesday that it has suspended all U.S. assistance to Somalia’s federal government over allegations that Somali officials destroyed an American-funded warehouse belonging to the World Food Program and seized 76 metric tons of food aid intended for impoverished civilians.
“The Trump Administration has a zero-tolerance policy for waste, theft, and diversion of life-saving assistance,” the department said in a statement.
“The State Department has paused all ongoing U.S. assistance programs which benefit the Somali Federal Government,” it said. “Any resumption of assistance will be dependent upon the Somali Federal Government, taking accountability for its unacceptable actions and taking appropriate remedial steps.”
The suspension comes as the Trump administration has ratcheted up criticism of Somali refugees and migrants in the United States, including over well-publicized fraud allegations involving child care centers in Minnesota. It has slapped significant restrictions on Somalis wanting to come to the U.S. and made it difficult for those already in the United States to stay.
76 metric tons of food. Stolen by the Somali government.
The same trustworthy Somali government that just sent over 400 'diplomats' to a conference in Turkey, and now?
They can't find a single one.
Every Somali in the Turkish hotels has vanished.
Somalia Delegates Abscond in Turkey. A total of 459 people were sent by the Somalia government to attend a conference in Turkey. Some of them have since fled and not returned. https://t.co/oSWj2wQXQk
— MM Somali TV (@MMSomalitv) November 12, 2026
Nine members of a Somali delegation to Kosovo have also just disappeared into thin air. The Serbs would very much like to know where they have gone.
It turns out that there's a worldwide trade in Somali diplomatic passports.
There have been some 20,000 of them issued. As the Xweet notes, in all of the EU there are only 10,000.
Failed state of Somalia has almost 20.000 diplomatic passport in circulation. When Germany, who doesn't recognize their normal passport, tried to setup an agreement with visa access for their diplomatic passport they where shocked to hear the number they have issued. The EU - with 27 members states - has less than 10.000 combined.
— Faisal (@faisalsulayman) November 12, 2026
Quite a little side gig the Somali government has going there.
It’s insane how Mogadishu has monetized every aspect of it’s so called sovereignty
— easttowestt 🌍 (@westtoeastt) November 12, 2026
So called Somalian diplomats are flooding Europe and the United States like @hassantop252 did in Ohio
If you have the cash, you can be a Somali diplomat.
I can't imagine why Trump's hard heart wouldn't want to send more money, when in fact the country is awash in it.
We have them billions of dollars from 2015-2025 what did they do with it? Why did they destroy American food warehouses?
— AuntLizR (@r_aunt2512) November 12, 2026
How come their own people here still didn't send home any of the billions they stole from taxpayers? They bought mansions and Mercedes trucks !
Not…
...How come their own people here still didn't send home any of the billions they stole from taxpayers? They bought mansions and Mercedes trucks !
Not another dime!
It's not Americas responsibility to fund Somalia! Where's Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey etc?
Let them help them now!
I believe The Atlantic feels the breath of the truth on its neck, because it's reposted the story to avoid the Community Note.
OOPS
Reposting to avoid the community note is weak and makes it that much more obvious that you are propaganda and not news. You will be re noted. https://t.co/GO38mnKWSb
— PA Millennial (@PAMillennial88) November 12, 2026
BUSTED
There's only one remedy for this.
CALL A WAAHMBULANCE
And try again later.
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