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Via David Axe, it appears that the Somali government has collapsed following the seizure of its capitol, Baidoa, by Islamist fighters. Ethiopian troops withdrew from Baidoa less than a day before its fall. The collapse of the Somali provisional government represents a foreign policy disaster for both Ethiopia and the United States; the United States supported Ethiopia's invasion in late 2006, in order to depose an Islamist government that the Bush administration believed was sympathetic to Al Qaeda. The proxy war quickly became a rallying point among conservative bloggers and commentators, who celebrated Ethiopia's brutal approach to counter-insurgency while decrying the limits imposed on the United States in Iraq. Caroline Glick denounced European skeptcism about the invasion as part of a wider pattern of anti-semitism and support for jihad:
But the EU's treatment of Ethiopia and the TFG [the secular Transitional Federal Government] indicates that Brussels' hostility towards the Jewish state is part of a much further-reaching policy. Europe's pro-jihad position toward the war in Somalia indicates that its support for jihad is over-arching rather than limited to specific battlegrounds. ...This author also briefly supported the Ethiopian efforts, a position he now blames on hard living and excessive drink. In fairness, he did renounce his support less than a month into the war, but recognizes that this hardly obviates the lapse in judgment. --Robert Farley
