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Where warrior-spies fight in the shadows
[Wash Times] As the Obama administration has retreated, or openly flirted with retrenchment, from Middle Eastern wars during its tenure, America has been spared the full onslaught of jihadi terrorism because of the exertions of nation’s special military forces and the intelligence communities working in concert. This close interaction of the Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency overcame a history of bureaucratic infighting over turf, funds, and bragging rights to wage a highly effective counterterrorist campaign far from the U.S. homeland after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Not widely known is the fact this team of special military units and intelligence personnel constituted one of the three counteroffensives that broke the back of the Iraq insurgency fueled by the Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist network after the 2003 invasion of the Persian Gulf country. Together with George W. Bush’s injection of 28,000 additional combat troops in 2007 and the winning over to the American side of Sunni sheiks who feared and loathed the insurgents imposition of Salafist dress and behavior codes, the U.S. covert forces accelerated the intelligence-to-raid cycle, while escalating the number of night operations from about a dozen a month to 300. These tactics beat back the ethnic terrorism-laced insurgency just as today the Special Operations Forces knock Middle East terrorists off stride, preventing many more terrorist incidents occurring outside the region. This "thin red line of heroes" made up of U.S. counterterrorism operators has filled the breach left by Washington’s disengagement. Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, tepid response to Libya’s plunge into chaos, blase reaction to the widening conflict in Syria (not to mention Damascus’ crossing the president’s red line on chemical weapons), and nearly complete withdrawal of all U.S. ground forces from Afghanistan created political vacuums for terrorist nests. Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or other terrorist movements have never been reluctant to franchise their brand of murderous ideology in vulnerable lands. Based in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, or other countries, terrorist instigators strive to mount or inspire attacks within the United States or Western Europe. Washington’s disassociation has fortunately been partly offset by SEAL, Delta, Ranger and other classified forces operating against the world’s festering terrorist hives from Pakistan to the Philippines. Started during the George W. Bush administration, which was widely criticized for its global-war-on-terrorism approach, America’s special operators and intelligence officers now deploy to countries not-at-war with the United States to disrupt terrorist plans, such as Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Con't. Posted by: Besoeker 2016-10-23 |
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