As US Special Operations Forces begin deploying to Africa, a clearer picture is emerging of America's preferred warfare strategy in a time of fiscal restraint: fewer troops, more drones, and the aggressive targeting of enemy leaders by special operations forces. The Uganda operation is reported to have been in the works for some time, but Special Forces didn't have troops available until recently. Defense officials foreshadowed a plan like this latest for Uganda in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review -- a document that highlights US strategic intent -- which made "preventing human suffering due to mass atrocities" a Pentagon priority.
It is not likely be an easy operation. An estimated 300 to 400 LRA forces remain in the region, and they are dispersed in ungoverned territory. The US has sent troops to aid the fight against the LRA before. In late 2008 the Pentagon provided some twenty advisers to help coordinate a strategy for attacking the LRA. The LRA's top leadership managed to escape and later took their revenge, directing the killing thousands of civilians in the north of Congo in the following weeks. As a result, the LRA dispersed into three to five small groups "in very tough jungle terrain."
Obama, for his part, argued that the intervention against the LRA is a matter of national security. Critics aren't so sure about that. But the White House has a congressional mandate: Lawmakers in May 2010 authorized the president to come up with a regional strategy for dealing with the LRA, after nongovernmental organizations and evangelical Christian groups pleaded for US intervention there.