U.S. Weighs Special Forces in Syria, Helicopters in Iraq by Phil Stewart and Jeff Mason, Reuters
The United States is considering sending a small number of special operations forces to Syria and attack helicopters to Iraq as it weighs options to build momentum in the battle against Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama, deeply averse to over-committing American troops to unpopular wars in the Middle East, could view some of the options as more viable than others as he approaches the final stretch of his presidency.
Still, Obama's administration is under pressure to ramp up America's effort, particularly after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Islamic State in May and the failure of a U.S. military program to train and arm thousands of Syrian rebels.
Two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said any deployments would be narrowly tailored, seeking to advance specific, limited military objectives in both Iraq and Syria.
That option includes temporarily deploying some U.S. special operations forces inside of Syria to advise moderate Syrian opposition fighters for the first time and, potentially, to help call in U.S. air strikes, one official said…
Comments
Agree with everything stated with the exception of your could of argument if we only implemented UW earlier. USSOF is not the only U.S. organization that conducts UW, and obliviously a lot of other countries conduct UW. I am repeating the obvious to point out that it appears to me the "coalition" started conducting UW quite early in the conflict. Whatever is and was being done is and was insufficient. Now we have the largest refugee crisis since WWII, and that presents its own security risks. That may be what is driving our leadership to modify our operational approach. Calling it a strategy would be overreach.
Listening to Sec Carter testify the other day, be said our approach was transactional. He also confirmed that there is no one person in charge of the overall effort. In that case do military objectives really support our policy ends? As you have said before, as a nation we are not good at UW. We have superb skills within SF to faciltate a whole of government strategy if empowered to do so, but to execute before we have a strategy sets us up to take the fall for failures of others.
Dear Administration officials,
If there is an indigenous solution or if indigenous capabilities contribute to a solution then a proper part of the strategy is unconventional warfare based on our special warfare capabilities (though that ship probably sailed some years ago due to administration risk averseness and ignorance). But I hope your new "3 R's" "strategy" based on counter-terrorism capabilities as applied to a civil war works out for us - at least it will look like we are doing something. And at least we will be able to pound a lot of nails with our hammer. We cannot apply our capabilities as either/or. It has to be both/and. We need our surgical strike capabilities along with special warfare and they will be better employed if they rest on the long term actions of special warfare. There is a yin yang relationship but our default to one over the other is not the way for SOF to support national strategy and campaign plans.
Very respectfully,
A concerned citizen
Excerpt:
QUOTE Two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said any deployments would be narrowly tailored, seeking to advance specific, limited military objectives in both Iraq and Syria.
That option includes temporarily deploying some U.S. special operations forces inside of Syria to advise moderate Syrian opposition fighters for the first time and, potentially, to help call in U.S. air strikes, one official said. END QUOTE