Obama Prefers Special Ops to Combat Forces in the War on Terrorism. It's Not Working. By Max Boot, Los Angeles Times

… This may sound like Pentagon inside baseball, but it actually reflects an important trend: the extent to which President Obama depends on Special Operations forces, especially the joint command, which specializes in direct action missions: kicking down doors and killing or capturing terrorists. Army Special Forces, popularly known as Green Berets, by contrast, specialize in the less sexy mission of working “by, with and through” indigenous forces. No career Green Beret officer has ever been put in charge of SOCOM.

Having become president by strongly opposing the Iraq war, Obama is loath to commit ground forces to combat. But it's a different story with special operations forces. Wherever the president sees a terrorist threat, his preferred solution is to use drones or special ops troops to stage “surgical” strikes against “high-level targets.”

And how is this strategy working? Thomas told a West Point interviewer last spring that in the war on terrorism “we're losing across the board.” That's not because of any lack of valor or skill on the part of the troops Thomas commands. Special operators can eliminate individual terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden, but they cannot eliminate the organizations those leaders run…

Read on.