Archive for February 14th, 2016
Welcome to the Age of the Commando
By MATT GALLAGHER. JAN. 30, 2016
A few months ago, my wife and I had dinner with a couple we didn’t know very well. It was awkward at first, but there was wine, and conversation soon followed.
At one point, the wife asked about my tour in Iraq, where I served 4 years as a cavalry officer. (And what cavalry do?)
I began talking about the desert, the tribal politics and the day-to-day travails of counterinsurgency.
“That’s all fine,” the husband interrupted. “But tell us about the super-soldiers. The Special-Ops guys. That’s what people care about.”
He had no time for “G.I. Joe.” He wanted “American Sniper.”
He is not alone. The mythos of Special Operations has seized our nation’s popular imagination, and has proved to be the one prism through which the public will engage with America’s wars.
From the box office to bookstores, the Special Ops commando — quiet and professional, stoic and square-jawed — thrives.
That he works in the shadows, where missions are classified and enemy combatants come in silhouettes of night-vision green, is all for the better — details only complicate. We like our heroes sanitized, perhaps especially in murky times like these.
The age of the commando, though, is more than pop cultural fantasy emanating from Hollywood. It’s now a significant part of our military strategy.
Last month the White House announced the nomination of Gen. Joseph L. Votel to lead United States Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in 20 countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Saudi Arabia — in other words, the hotbed of our geopolitical conflicts.
General Votel has been the head of the military’s Special Operations Command since 2014. His Central Command nomination represents a break in tradition; it has almost always gone to generals of more conventional backgrounds. Military analysts hailed it as a sign of the Obama administration’s trust in, and reliance on, Special Operations.
Special Operations Command, or Socom, oversees all Special Operations Forces — our Delta Force operators, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Army Rangers, among others.
Special Operations personnel deployed to approximately 139 nations in 2015 — about 70 percent of the countries on the planet. While a vast majority of those missions involve training the defense forces of partner countries, a few involve direct combat.
In December, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter announced at a House hearing that an “expeditionary targeting force” will be sent to Iraq to conduct raids on top Islamic State targets. They’ll be joining the roughly 3,500 troops already there working as advisers and trainers. President Obama seems desperate to strike a balance between doing nothing in the region and not reneging on his “no boots on the ground” promises.
Clearly, commandos have boots, and those boots touch the ground. But White House officials have taken to what a report in this newspaper recently called “linguistic contortions” to obscure the forces’ combat roles.
As the military as a whole downsizes, Special Ops recruitment continues to rise.
There are approximately 70,000 Special Ops personnel today, a number that includes soldiers, civilians, National Guard and Reservists, as well. This number is up from 45,600 in 2001 and 61,400 in 2011.
Still, Adm. William H. McRaven — then the head of Socom — told Congress in 2014 that “the force has continued to fray” from the endless deployment cycles. In response, the Army alone last year put out a call for 5,000 new Special Ops candidates.
In the political sense, the policy works. The secrecy surrounding Special Ops keeps the heavy human costs of war off the front pages.
But in doing so, it also keeps the nonmilitary public wholly disconnected from the armed violence carried out in our name. It enables our state of perpetual warfare, and ensures that as little as we care and understand today, we’ll care and understand even less tomorrow
Special Operations are not a panacea.
Just as SWAT teams can’t fulfill their purpose without everyday beat cops on corners, operators can’t and don’t function in a vacuum.
Many a military analyst has compared our current “counterterror” approach to a Band-Aid; while effective, that effectiveness has no clear end state.
And recent history suggests an overreliance on our commandos can lead to tragedy.
In 1993, in Somalia, Special Operations seemed a cure-all, too. Then came the battle of Mogadishu. Same with 1980 and Operation Eagle Claw, as we desperately tried to end the Iran hostage crisis. The former led to a short-lived retreat from international intervention, the latter to the very creation of Socom.
Further, like a postmodern Praetorian Guard, our operators don’t serve at the will of the American people.
Though Congress holds the purse strings for Special Operations, decisions about individual missions are not generally put before them for approval. Individual force commanders overwhelmingly make those calls. While Mr. Obama has proved cautious in authorizing their use, the next commander in chief might not be so prudent.
Clear away the smoke and romance, and Special Ops often function as highly trained kill squads sent out into the beyond in the name of country. They are the best there is at that.
But this strategy ensures a recurring cycle of armed conflict, a decision of such significance that all citizens need to be weighing it and considering it, not just a select few.
My own experience with Special Ops is mixed.
I didn’t have many positive encounters with them overseas. As part of the fabled surge in Iraq, my scout platoon and I patrolled a rural town north of Baghdad for 15 months on a counterinsurgency mission that often seemed to conflict with that of the operators.
IN early 2008 we were called to a farm to help pick up the pieces after a commando raid. A tribal leader claimed that two of his lieutenants had been taken by mistake by “the other Americans, the ones with helicopters.” Those other Americans, the tribal leader told me, said that the two Iraqis were brothers, and members of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Now we were left to explain to the men’s family why they were gone, why their house had been cycloned, and why a placard of Mecca had been torn from a wall, and receive the hard stares from those men’s children as we stood over a dead pet dog that had been shot during the raid.
I didn’t tell that story to our dinner companions, though. Instead I talked about a visit I made to Tacoma, Wash.,
in 2011, when I got to know the other side of these other Americans. I’d left the military and was now a writer, or trying to be one. A college friend and his Ranger unit were returning from Afghanistan, and I had visions of writing a tale of young men constantly at war but in between battles.
The Rangers, the Special Ops unit that Pat Tillman left his N.F.L. career in 2002 to join, is a proving ground of sorts, and attracts many younger soldiers.
Though designed in part as an elite light infantry for airfield seizures, the Rangers have seen their purpose morph: More than ever, kill-or-capture raids are their raison d’être. They’re the fullbacks of the Special Ops world, all brute force and power, as memorialized in the film “Black Hawk Down”: “We get on the five-yard line,” a Ranger officer tells a dismissive Delta soldier, “you’re going to need my Rangers.”
If that was true — and it didn’t apply to many, in my estimation — they’d have their reasons.
A number of Rangers I met joked that vampires saw more light than they did during their deployments.
I came to see these young men in a way I hadn’t when I’d worn the uniform myself, because of the way they embraced the endlessness of it all. They weren’t fighting for resolution, as we’d been in Iraq, or how we thought we’d been. Peace over there wasn’t their goal. Calm back here was.
I didn’t agree with that worldview, not at all. But I still appreciated it.
On Super Bowl Sunday, my friend and I were invited to watch the game with a group of older sergeants. It seemed that most had already settled into their stateside lives, sharing diaper responsibilities with their wives, swapping war stories with one another in between.
While the adults watched the game, kids ran around with Nerf guns as big as they were. This was no Cowboys and Indians. They were playing “Rangers and Rangers.” They all wanted to be like Daddy, and none were willing to play the role of an Al Qaeda jihadist, even in pretend
The baby-faced Ranger privates I helped sneak into bars in 2011 are hardened sergeants by now.
The sergeants I met are either in charge of entire Ranger companies or have moved into the so-called black units of Socom, like Delta Force. They remain anonymous silhouettes to the country they serve, not just because their bosses at the Pentagon want it that way, but because we do, too.
The other Americans, indeed.
Hey ho, Young women: Get With It and vote Hillary. Madeleine Albright (criminal against humanity) recommends
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 14, 2016
Young women Get With It and vote Hillary: Recommend Madeleine Albright
Re “Female Icons Tell the Young to Get With It” (front page, Feb. 8):
As a female college student preparing to enter “the real world,” I find that there is little that is more important to me than feminism.
But I am tired of being condescended to by other women about the presidential election.
I find Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright’s arguments that young women who support Bernie Sanders need to wise up incredibly offensive. (Ms. Steinem has apologized.)
How dare these women imply that young women who vote for Senator Sanders are simply too immature and absent-minded to understand that Hillary Clinton is the better candidate?
Is it possible that some young women are voting for Mr. Sanders because they agree with his policies more?
Sure, to cast a vote for Mrs. Clinton is to support a woman. But she is not a messiah, and her presidency would certainly not be the end of a long road for feminism. (And she vehemently supported all US preemptive wars)
Ms. Steinem and Ms. Albright are reacting to Mrs. Clinton’s lack of support among young female voters by slinging insults at the women who have supported and looked up to them for years.
If we are going to assume that women are intelligent enough to form their own opinions, then women must respect other women’s choices.
A woman can be a feminist and vote for Mr. Sanders, and no amount of tantrum-throwing from powerful women will change that.
When it comes down to it, Ms. Steinem and Ms. Albright’s inflammatory claims will serve only to further divide feminists, as they perpetuate the very chasm they lament.
NATALIE BEAM
Charlottesville, Va.
To the Editor:
Although I am a 67-year-old feminist, I am horrified and angry that Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright think that Hillary Clinton should be nominated because she is a woman. That is no different from losing because you are a woman.
Choosing the Democratic presidential nominee is not and never should be a feminist issue. The nominee must be the best person for the job: the person with the most experience and the ability to be elected.
Mrs. Clinton has the most experience to run the country and a greater ability to win the election than Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
In 1972 George McGovern was the Sanders of his day, handicapped by the perception that he was a left-leaning extremist. McGovern lost all but one state, and a landslide victory (and mandate) ensued for Richard Nixon and the Republicans, ushering in a shameful period of American history. (Thus, don’t be afraid of the socialist candidate. Be scared of the other Nixon in a female body)
The stakes in this election are extremely high and will determine whether the United States will move further right toward an oligarchy or left toward greater democracy.
CARRIE GOLKIN
New York
To the Editor:
If ever there were an opportunity to alienate young women voters, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright are carrying the torch with their bewildering reprimands of young female supporters of Bernie Sanders. The cluelessness of these feminist elders is astounding.
Senator Sanders is appealing by virtue of a progressive message that resonates deeply with younger people of both sexes. As a woman over 50 with deep affinity for the feminist movement,
I support Bernie Sanders. I am also embarrassed for the Clinton campaign and the message these endorsements evoke. (mostly Multinational corporations)
We need to encourage and inspire young women who are enthusiastically embracing a social justice platform, not scold them.
More important, if social media is any indication, the insulting messages that young women who do not support Hillary Clinton are going to a “special place in hell” (Ms. Albright) or seeking the attention of boys (Ms. Steinem) is backfiring terribly.
JOAN GROSSMAN
Is hating a political system same as hating a country? Lebanon
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 14, 2016
Is hating a political system same as hating a country? Lebanon
Every now and then, we see a new post about Lebanon going viral on Facebook, with the same set of cliché pictures and the same “40 Interesting Facts about Lebanon” that we’ve been hearing ever since people started using the internet.
Like the whole “Lebanon has 18 sects, 40 daily newspapers, is 6000 years old, is not a desert, we created the alphabet” thingy.
Reine Azzi shared this link
No, #Lebanon is not heaven on earth but it’s still our country and I don’t understand people hating on it that much.
Self-hating is as bad as over-exaggerated statements and doesn’t help in anything.
The guy who shared that FB post that went crazy viral on Facebook shared two pictures that aren’t even from Lebanon, but there are far nicer and more beautiful pictures to share, and the information he shared is not accurate: It is wrong.
But we have a very rich culture (Not that current), a history that we should be proud of, and tons of facts that will make us feel proud to be Lebanese.
Leaving is always an option for those who hate #Lebanon that much; it takes time but it’s there.
And until then, do yourself a favor and try to enjoy the little things that make this country a special one.
(If your parents, or those who died, made it affordable for you to enjoy what is available)
However, the latest post, that has gone crazy viral over the past few days, included at least two pictures that aren’t even from Lebanon and that most people didn’t notice or chose to ignore. One of them was apparently taken in Spain and the other in Japan.
Here’s what the post said:
NO we are NOT in a desert. NO we don’t ride on CAMELS like others do.
YES we have NATURAL snow slopes. YES we are a FREE country.
Lebanon is 6000 YEARS OLD. THE BIBLE was named after our city BYBLOS.
“THE CONTINENT EUROPE” was named after our phoenician PRINCESS EUROPA .
The CHRIST made his 1st miracle at QANA in southern Lebanon.
And you are READING and COMMENTING on this post coz the PHOENICIANS our ANCESTORS taught you how by creating the ALPHABET . So stop asking WHERE IS LEBANON!!!
This is in Lebanon and it’s much better than the fake picture being circulated – via Dr. Antoine Daher
I never shared the post and I hate it when people share wrong information, self-inflated statements and misleading pictures but I don’t think we need to make a big deal out of it.
The two pictures could very well be in Lebanon because they are just showing sexy girls on a ski slope and a snowy road.
It’s not like he was sharing pictures of pyramids or the Tour Eiffel in Lebanon. There are tons of misleading posts like that on Facebook related to other countries that most of us tend to share from time to time without checking whether it’s true or not.
As far as the “facts” listed that are meant to help people figure out where Lebanon is, they are mostly wrong or exaggerated but again it doesn’t mean that we have nothing to be proud of as Lebanese.
On the contrary, we have a very rich culture, a history that we should be proud of, and tons of facts that will make us feel proud to be Lebanese.
On another note, and as I stated in a previous post, I cannot understand self-hating Lebanese who look for any reason to hate on their own country and promote it in a very negative way.
In fact, I am not sure which is worse? Those who only seen Lebanon as heaven on earth or those who hate this country and want to leave.
I find both extremes wrong but I truly believe that seeing the positive in things not only reflects on our country but on the way we live our lives. I hate a lot of things that are happening here but I try to change them or ignore them (if possible) and focus on the things that make me happy and there are plenty of them.
We do need a wake up call every now and then, and I agree with a lot of points raised by Elie from A Separate State of Mind on that same topic, but calling Lebanon a brain-dead country was wrong and as bad as “vulgar fetishization”
(Thank u Mustapha for that term).
PS: Since the author of that post couldn’t find proper ski slopes or snowy roads pictures from Lebanon, here are few recent pictures that are far better than the ones he shared:
via LiveLoveCedars
via LiveLoveCedars
via LiveLoveMzaar
via Haig Melikian
via LiveLoveCedars
And this one from 1969!