Last week an American soldier died in ground combat in Iraq, and while the Obama administration at first tried to downplay the raid, there is now strong evidence that it may well be a harbinger of a much greater role for American ground forces in Iraq and Syria. Here’s the Washington Post yesterday:
President Obama’s most senior national security advisers have recommended measures that would move U.S. troops closer to the front lines in Iraq and Syria, officials said, a sign of mounting White House dissatisfaction with progress against the Islamic State and a renewed Pentagon push to expand military involvement in long-running conflicts overseas.
The debate over the proposed steps, which would for the first time position a limited number of Special Operations forces on the ground in Syria and put U.S. advisers closer to the firefights in Iraq, comes as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter presses the military to deliver new options for greater military involvement in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
And here’s Secretary Carter today:
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin “direct action on the ground” against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive.
“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group.
Carter pointed to last week’s rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIS.
Carter and Pentagon officials initially refused to characterize the rescue operation as U.S. boots on the ground. However, Carter said last week that the military expects “more raids of this kind” and that the rescue mission “represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission.”
Perhaps I’m overly optimistic, but I’m detecting a bit of late-term Jimmy Carter here. After Soviet aggression and the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter started to reverse his own policies of appeasement by launching a new defense buildup, authorizing the (failed) military effort to rescue the hostages, announcing the Carter doctrine, and supporting the Afghan resistance. Obama, after pledging to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has put troops back in ground combat in Iraq, is extending the American military presence in Afghanistan, and — outside the Middle East — just allowed a Navy ship to challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. He’s still a far cry from Carter (think about that statement for a moment), but change is afoot. It’s too little, too late, to undo years worth of harm, but these modest changes represent a measure of progress. We’ll soon see whether they’re enough to meaningfully change the facts on the ground.