Officials Parsing Words Over ‘Combat’ in Iraq
Officials Parsing Words Over 'Combat' in Iraq by Kristina Wong, The Hill
The raid to free captives held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is bringing up uncomfortable questions for the Obama administration.
U.S. special operations forces not only engaged in combat with ISIS fighters last week for the first time, but they also called in airstrikes from the ground, according to defense officials.
After a U.S. and Kurdish Peshmerga team conducted a raid to rescue 70 Iraqi hostages from an ISIS prison compound in northern Iraq, U.S. forces then called in airstrikes from F-15 fighter jets that leveled the compound.
“After the hostages were safe, American F-15s flattened the Daesh prison,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, on Saturday.
The White House, however, has repeatedly suggested U.S. troops would not face combat in Iraq…
I truly wish that the legacy of Master Sergeant Wheeler will be the end to our self-deception and parsing of words over US forces in combat with no boots on the ground. We have to be honest with ourselves and the American public that when it is in our interests we are willing to put American personnel in harm’s way and they may in fact be in combat. We need to have the moral strength to admit how we are employing our military forces and why.
We should never shy away from saying that we are going to do what is necessary to protect our interests and that includes putting US forces in harm’s way and that that may result in combat. If we cannot say that then perhaps those interests are not sufficient to warrant putting US men and women in harm’s way.
I guess I am somewhat conflicted about this. Reading the article what actually happened is hard to say.
The order were that U.S. Soldiers were not “supposed” to place themselves in situations where enemy contact was likely. My first impression was that this Soldier was playing fast and loose with that definition, or just disregarding it because he wanted to play Cowboy. On the flip side, we conducted a raid into Syria to kill Abu Sayyaf – how is that not Combat.
This is not a new problem. When a Soldier died in a “training mission” in Columbia as part of the War on Drugs, was that Combat? How about the Marines killed in the Beirut Bombing? How about Khobar towers? When they were shot in Chattanooga?
Is the key that you were on foreign soil? Is the key that you could shoot back? What happens when you are not looking to close with and destroy the enemy, but the enemy shows up on your doorstep anyway?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favor of playing semantic games with reality. But as soon as you start down this road you have to make some clear distinctions. Then you have to explain those distinctions to the American Population. You have to make those distinctions clear to your Soldiers.
I don’t have an answer that I feel comfortable with yet. But I get an uncomfortable feeling about this. There seems to be no right answer to this.
I guess the one question I would really like to have answered is “was the MSG on this mission with the full knowledge of his superiors?” Were there real, hard and fast rules that kept Americans away from the fight, or was that just political rhetoric? Did the MSG violate those rules, or was he following the direction of his command? The difference matters, but it won’t matter to many. If it walks like a duck and all that. It is hard to argue that when you died during a raid into enemy territory by enemy fire, that you were not engaged in Combat when you died. Still, I don’t feel comfortable validating that if you were there of your own accord and not by the orders of those appointed above you.