They don't get it at all. It's not limited to the AFRICOM announcement and it's not limited to Africa... here in Asia it's been a running theme for decades in my experience and much longer from the accounts of others. I've given up hoping for improvement.
Part of the problem is that those themes are almost mandatory in domestic political communication, but in today's world what's said for domestic consumption often goes out to a much wider audience... and often spills into non-domestic communication as well.
They don't get it, and probably never will. The blunders go back way farther than Iraq and Afghanistan, and they probably will continue. Fortunately that's not the end of the world. They never got Asia or Latin America and proceeded with epic blunders in both, but despite that there's been real progress in both domestic conditions and relations with the US.
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