Daily News — Obama will deploy 250 additional special ops forces to Syria to fight ISIS
AERZEN, Germany — President Barack Obama on Monday announced the deployment to Syria of an additional 250 U.S. special operations forces to assist local troops who are trying to dislodge Islamic State extremists from their war-torn country, significantly broadening the American presence there.
Obama, touting recent gains against the group, said the added troops would help “to keep up this momentum” against IS.
The move will bring the number of personnel to roughly 300, up from about 50 special operations forces currently there.
Obama revealed his decision a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that more than 200 U.S. troops soon will be headed to Iraq, where local forces are also battling Islamic State militants who control areas of that country.
Hersh was asked to respond to this announcement on Democracy Now! today.
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And I just don’t understand what the president is doing, why he wants to engage more. But, you know, it’s not my call. I would also — I’ve been told there are many more forces in Iraq than we’re publicly announcing, including even some elements of one of our airborne divisions. What the hell? As usual, we don’t really know what the game plan is. I do not understand why he’s decided to jump into a war that was being run by — it’s being won right now by the Syrian army and its allies, including Russia. I just — I can just speculate that our anti-Putin, anti-Russian instinct in America continues apace. That’s all.
Before getting to his “I just don’t understand what the president is doing, Hersh laid out all the reasons why US troops to defeat ISIS in Syria aren’t necessary.
Further in the interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Sy, were you surprised by President Obama’s announcement today in Germany?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Horrified. I just don’t think it’s the way to go. I think it’s just putting us into — you know, as you mentioned in your introduction, we’ve been doing this war against terror, against an idea, since after 9/11, you know? And how are we doing, fellas? How’s it going there? You know, has the amount of opposition to us spread? Has the hatred of America grown more intense? We are truly a very much hated country in the Middle East. And it’s partly because of the way we fight our wars — with drone attacks and a lot of force, the prisons that we did. And Abu Ghraib was just one of many prisons. And a lot of killing goes on by us, you know.
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But maybe the most revealing comments came next:
And here’s how things have changed, for me, anyway. I’m writing the same kind of stories now about this president, very critical stories, because, you know, somebody has to hold him to — you know, at least based on what I think is as good as evidence I’ve ever had in all the stories I wrote for The New York Times in the ’70s. I was there for six, seven, eight years as a sort of a hotshot there in the Washington bureau. And I wrote a lot of stories, won a lot of prizes, going after the president, going after wars, going after Kissinger, writing about illegal activities. And all of a sudden, the same stories, still anonymous — I mean, I wrote them anonymously then, and I’m writing them anonymously now. …
Hersh is probably not perplexed at all. He knows that in US wars escalation is always easier than initiating a war. First come the covert ops (USG and in coordination with mercs both indigeneous and foreign) in support of opposition factions or to put down opposition to the existing government. When a conflagration gets hot enough for media to report on it, in come the “USG advisors.” Only a few and touted as required to promote peace and democracy. Then some special ops troops to protect the advisors and “train” local forces in standard policing procedures and defense when the government or other factions attack them. Then a few more special ops guys because the job was larger than originally anticipated and the locals are illiterate, undisciplined, don’t train quickly and easily, etc.
The truth about Syria is that the US has been training “freedom fighters” in Jordan for several years and when they get into Syria, they are either wiped out and/or flee or join one of the various AQ spin-offs (either way all their new weaponry and ammo ends up in AQ spin-off hands). Those Syrian “freedom fighters” were supposed to remain united in the one goal, to take out Assad. Those joining the cause from other countries were welcome.
Those like Hersh that kept pointing that this was madness were dismissed as anti-something or another. (It’s not by accident that men from Belgium, France, etc. could freely travel back on forth from home to the fight in Syria.) It’s not that they could “go rogue,” but they were already rogue.
Assad (yet another Hitler), official USG spokespersons assured us, would be gone in six months. That was a few years ago. (Like the Iraq War would be over in weeks if not days.) Oh, the shock of beheadings recorded with high-end production values! That whipped up fury among the populace in western countries. “Something must be done to stop these monsters.” Send in the bombers. Once it became an intractable mess and the USG was out of options (formal troops were off the table), an old trick from the Brzezinski-Carter days was reprised. Hersh covered it at the top of his interview without making the complete historical reference:
But the real winner in the last year or so of the war there has been the Russians. And the Russians — the bombing was much more effective. If you remember, the president had said publicly, when Putin decided to put his air force hard at work there, he said it would be a quagmire, they wouldn’t be able to get out, it’s going to be, you know, schadenfreude — it would be like what happened to us in Afghanistan, and is happening to us, and certainly did happen to us in Vietnam. But they did it. They came in, and they did very well.
That’s not at all how the USG anticipated that it would turn out. Is it possible that Russia learned many things from their Afghanistan misadventure? (Unlike the US that didn’t learn diddly squat from Vietnam.) The Russians as winners in the war in Syria is also intolerable to the USG. But the options are still terrible: join ISIS, join Turkey (and throw our “good friends the Kurds” under the bus), or keep our fingers crossed and double-down on our support for the faux “freedom fighters,” al Nusra, but officially just a little bit more support?
(The remainder of this diary is almost pure speculation on my part. Not interested in discussing or defending it. Been there; done that. In 2000 when I attempted to persuade others to vote for Gore on the basis of my confidence that if elected (didn’t consider selected), GWB would have us back in another war in Iraq. I persuaded nobody and when the time came, those same people were gungho for the Iraq War.)
The task will be to keep those 300 Special Operations troops alive in the coming months with air support and maybe just a few more troops if needed. Syrian and Russian, etc. forces know better than to take out the US special ops and also have the task of remaining far enough away from that the USG would have difficulty claiming that Syrian/Russian forces had attacked US.
Why so few troops? Why only a few months? What do people think Obama and King Abdullah talked about? Come on — Obama knows this is a “dumb war;” he knows better than this. He doesn’t want another US miitary debacle on his watch, but he also doesn’t want to tie the hands of his successor. HRC is just itching for the day when she can demonstrate her yuuge cajones by felling Assad, the Iranian regime, and Putin in well fell swoop. And she’ll have Kissinger, Cheney, and Bill cheering her on.
