TAMPA, Florida — Fighting simmering frustration in their ranks over ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria, top U.S. special operations commanders say they are building forces for a multi-generational fight – not a war that will be won in the next few years.
“We talk about it being a 15-year struggle,” Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, who heads the Air Force Special Operations Command, said during a special operations forum in Tampa.
But many special operations officers and troops both in Tampa and Washington don't want to wait that long to take the fight to ISIS. They were eager to talk about their aggravation over fighting by remote in Iraq and Syria: having to advise Iraqis, Kurdish Peshmerga, and rebel Syrian fighters from afar instead of joining them in battle.
"We are doing everything through cellphones… It's hard to do much when you can't go outside the wire," said one special operator, using the military jargon for the perimeter of a base.
They blame the hands-off approach on an Obama administration unwilling to risk even small numbers of American lives in battle, burned by the fallout of the loss of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and intent on preserving the legacy of President Barack Obama’s troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You can't say ‘we're with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations,’” said a former senior special operations official briefed on the ISIS campaign.
He and many other officers current and former at the conference believe both Mosul and Ramadi could have withstood the assault of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, if a small number of U.S. military advisors had been working with Iraqi forces at the front lines.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the debates over war strategy.
“They know as long as there are Americans with them, that if they get in trouble, there is intelligence,” and medical evacuation, the former senior official said. “They don't have faith in their own chain of command to do it, so rather than being captured and slaughtered by ISIS, they'll break and run.”
Another former senior special operations officer said this is the normal tension that occurs every few years between America’s political leadership that weighs the public’s reaction to U.S. casualties, and a group of professional risk-takers who want to fight alongside those they’ve trained to fight.
"It's a generational thing," said the officer, who said U.S. forces were similarly frustrated when training Nicaraguan forces in the 1980s. "Every few years, there is a place where the U.S. administration won't let U.S. forces accompany those they've trained," the officer said. “This younger generation has to get over it.”
U.S. Central Command’s program to train Syrian rebels – a special operations mission – has been delayed partly by Congressional funding delays, and partly because it’s been difficult to find trustworthy candidates without being inside Syria, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the process.
“You can't say ‘we're with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations.'"
“We talk about it being a 15-year struggle,” Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, who heads the Air Force Special Operations Command, said during a special operations forum in Tampa.
But many special operations officers and troops both in Tampa and Washington don't want to wait that long to take the fight to ISIS. They were eager to talk about their aggravation over fighting by remote in Iraq and Syria: having to advise Iraqis, Kurdish Peshmerga, and rebel Syrian fighters from afar instead of joining them in battle.
"We are doing everything through cellphones… It's hard to do much when you can't go outside the wire," said one special operator, using the military jargon for the perimeter of a base.
They blame the hands-off approach on an Obama administration unwilling to risk even small numbers of American lives in battle, burned by the fallout of the loss of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and intent on preserving the legacy of President Barack Obama’s troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You can't say ‘we're with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations,’” said a former senior special operations official briefed on the ISIS campaign.
He and many other officers current and former at the conference believe both Mosul and Ramadi could have withstood the assault of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, if a small number of U.S. military advisors had been working with Iraqi forces at the front lines.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the debates over war strategy.
“They know as long as there are Americans with them, that if they get in trouble, there is intelligence,” and medical evacuation, the former senior official said. “They don't have faith in their own chain of command to do it, so rather than being captured and slaughtered by ISIS, they'll break and run.”
Another former senior special operations officer said this is the normal tension that occurs every few years between America’s political leadership that weighs the public’s reaction to U.S. casualties, and a group of professional risk-takers who want to fight alongside those they’ve trained to fight.
"It's a generational thing," said the officer, who said U.S. forces were similarly frustrated when training Nicaraguan forces in the 1980s. "Every few years, there is a place where the U.S. administration won't let U.S. forces accompany those they've trained," the officer said. “This younger generation has to get over it.”
U.S. Central Command’s program to train Syrian rebels – a special operations mission – has been delayed partly by Congressional funding delays, and partly because it’s been difficult to find trustworthy candidates without being inside Syria, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the process.
“You can't say ‘we're with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations.'"
