Murderous Superstition

Uganda has been in the news lately for its barbaric new anti-gay law, pushed by Christian extremists. But that's not the only major problem there caused by religious belief and superstition. There are now rising numbers of human sacrifices taking place throughout the country.

Children are disappearing, victims of human sacrifice. ... belief, that burying a child's body parts will make you rich, is, police say, being promoted by some traditional healers, known locally as witch doctors

From the reaction, this isn't a case of a few incidents.

Two thousand officers have been trained to tackle the hideous crime, forming the Anti-Human Sacrifice Task Force, equipped in part by the U.S. government.

Is there anywhere in the world where U.S. taxpayers aren't paying for something? Well, at least this time it's a worthy cause.  Who would have thought that in 2010 there would be a need for a task force to prevent human sacrifice? This line in the story also caught my attention.

Police are visiting churches and mosques, trying to crush the growing belief in the power of child sacrifice.

They are going to people promoting superstition in order to attack even worse superstition. In between demonizing homosexuals and supporting their execution, mainstream religions in Uganda can take on the problem of human sacrifice. After all, human sacrifice is bad unless God orders it. 

The U.S. Military in Uganda

According to a report in the New York Times

The American military helped plan and pay for a recent attack on a notorious Ugandan rebel group, but the offensive went awry, scattering fighters who carried out a wave of massacres as they fled, killing as many as 900 civilians.

The operation was aimed at the Lord's Resistance Army, and the U.S. provided the Ugandan's with "satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel." The U.S. has been training Ugandan troops for years, but has never had this level of reported involvement in actual operations.

This action raises all sorts of questions. Leaving aside the fact that the planned offensive was horribly bungled, I have to wonder, is this really a wise use of our resources? What makes Uganda worthy of U.S. support and training in the first place? The Lord's Resistance Army is by all accounts a vicious group that perpetrates atrocities on a regular basis. But atrocities are common on all sides in African warfare. Is the LRA an enemy of the U.S.? Why is it necessary for the U.S. military to take an active role attempting to suppress it? Why do we want to be involved in the horrific mess that is the Congo civil war? I'm not an isolationist, but I'm not sure there are solid answers to all these questions.