Top U.S. Special Forces General: ‘We’re Hurting Ourselves’ With All These Movies and Books by Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Washington Post
Army Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, rarely talks specifics about the troops under his command. Direct action raids in Iraq, rescue missions in Afghanistan, Special Operations forces deployed in places like Syria, Somalia and Yemen are all — if even acknowledged — described in broad platitudes.
But when asked about the propensity of some of his elite forces to write books, star in movies and help advise on the production of certain video games, Thomas is outspoken — and angry.
“It is a phenomenon that is anathema to me. It runs counter to everything that any of us whoever entered special operations know [is] the right way to do business,” Thomas said during a conference hosted by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington on Wednesday. “It baffles me that people don’t hold true to that standard.”
“We won’t tolerate it,” he added…
Comments
Condor...if you want a perfect example of the total confusion inside SF, CENTCOM and the Obama WH.....check the massive confusion today when 25 SF personnel tried to enter northern Syria...... then got kicked out and .....then via mediation by Turkey and the anti Assad CIA proxy rebels FSA were allowed back in ......on the Syrian thread.....
Core anger by the FSA at the border was the dislike by FSA of SF supporting the Kurdish proxy YPG/SDF/PKK.......BECAUSE YPG/SDF/PKK has also been attacking FSA constantly using Russian CAS to capture key Arab Sunni villages/towns instead of fighting IS......
See if MSM picks up the story......
I agree Outlaw. It's been a slow and painful process for me over the last decade as I have come to realize our current leadership in the military is broken beyond repair. We've become so obsessed with technology, feel-good-intel-briefs, and our own delusions of grandeur that we've become the epitome of a great power drunk with our own image that there is only one word left to describe ourselves: hubris.
My thoughts on this subject starting forming many years ago after I first entered the Marines in the mid-1990s and thought, why aren't we really training on the important stuff like high-intensity conflict? Why are we not spending more of our workdays doing war gaming exercises and PME instead of all the bureaucratic fluff that our modern military is now forced to do?
When I got to the Fleet as a helicopter driver, our focus on mission briefs were these large, three day evolutions of mission planning that culminated in a lengthy and elaborate PPT flight brief. It really didn't make sense because having been raised in a military family and having spent years reading military history, one thing I was sure of was that OPTEMPO in modern high-intensity conflict would immediately invalidate that type of mission planning and would be driven by other players, especially the enemy.
Certainly large scale planning will always be part of war, but day to day missions will be driven at such a high OPTEMPO that I don't ever see any unit ever having the time to stand down for 72 hours so they can prepare a large PPT driven mission brief. It's baffling and concerning at the same time.
Of course, we're always prepared for the last war and not the next and I feel our wake-up call is coming soon.
What baffles me as a former SF combat vet from the UW days....how can the SF of today be so whiplashed back and forth in Syria and yet not say a clear and concise word directed at the NCA??
FIRST it was SF wearing YPG uniform patches, then CENTCOM telling SF to take them off, THEN SF putting them back on and NOW US FLAGS........
NOT exactly sure if US SF wants to be in the middle when the Turks arrive after the Russian ceasefire ends....as they have firmly signaled they will enter Manbij and secure their Syrian border regionsSF or no SF.....
American forces place US flag on the border town of GirêSpî (Tal Abyad) to warn Turkey not to attack SDF there.
BUT WAIT Turkey has warned both the US and SDF which is really part and parcel of YPG/PKK...Turkey has clearly and concisely told the US and the Kurds it will not tolerate Kurdish forces controlling the Turkish border......WHY..... the Turks view the SDF/YPG allowing PKK troops to move back and forth across the SDF controlled border areas...AND they view the SDF/YPG as part of PKK..A US named terrorist group......
MAYBE CENTCOM, SF and the Obama WH urgently need to speak French...........
PYD is carrying out PKK policy in Syria, Massoud Barzani tells Le Monde:
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/...055_3218.html#
THEN this from today's social media side.......
So if this article is anywhere close to be accurate then SF does have some serious "new issues" especially if one SF soldier refers to the FSA Southern Front as JaN (AQ) now rebranded as JFS.
If SF soldiers do not fully and inherently understand the mission set and the ground players and have no earthly idea of the NCA strategic strategy when WHY not stand up and simply ask their own Command what the hell is ongoing?
https://sofrep.com/63764/us-special-...-ops-in-syria/
US Special Forces sabotage White House policy gone disastrously wrong with covert ops in Syria
By Jack Murphy 09.14.2016
Quote:
“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘#### this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they#know they#are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘#### it, who cares?’”
“I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. A second Special Forces soldier commented that one Syrian militia they had trained recently crossed the border from Jordan on what had been pitched as a large-scale shaping operation that#would change the course of the war. Watching the battle on a monitor while a drone flew overhead, “We literally watched them, with 30 guys in their force, run away from three or four ISIS guys.”
Something is very wrong inside SF if this is an accurate picture and report....
This does not include the CENTCOM support via SF for the YPG...just a fig leaf for the US named terrorist group PKK....
NOTICE SF accompanies YPG/SDF/PKK But not FSA on operations....why is that?