Oppose Any Foe

by Mark Moyar

  American special operators wanted, at minimum, to maintain existing levels of support to Mali’s armed forces after the coup. They were overridden by US civilian officials, who terminated all military aid as a means of punishing the Malian military for ousting a democratically elected government. The loss of US support and the turmoil resulting from post-coup purges crippled Mali’s armed forces, thereby throwing open the door to Al Qaeda, which gained control of all northern Mali within a few weeks. When Al Qaeda attempted to conquer Mali’s capital in January 2013, American special operators recommended that they be given permission to help the Malian armed forces, but permission was denied by the State Department. Only the intervention of French air and ground units prevented the Al Qaeda curtain from falling over all of Mali.

  The discord between US special operations forces and the State Department over Mali eventually leaked into the press. Under fire for ignoring warnings about rising extremism, State Department officials attempted to shift blame to the special operators. “Years of training by United States Special Forces did not stop the Malian military from fleeing when the Islamist insurgency started last January,” sniped Vicki Huddleston, the former US ambassador to Mali. “In fact, the military exacerbated the chaos by overthrowing Mali’s democratically elected government last March.”

  US military officers countered that the weaknesses of Mali’s military stemmed from corruption and inefficiency at the upper levels of Mali’s civil government—problems that fell within the State Department’s portfolio. Malian bureaucrats had reshuffled soldiers after they received a round of American training, denying those soldiers the prolonged exposure to American training that was required for major improvements in skills and organizational culture. Special operators did, however, admit to one serious mistake, the sporadic scheduling of their training cycle. American trainers had often shown up for thirty days or six weeks at a time, which was too short, even if the Malian soldiers were not undergoing frequent reshuffling. Recognition of this deficiency in the Malian training programs ultimately led SOF to shift from episodic training to continuous training in a multitude of nations.

  Further resistance to special operations beyond Iraq and Afghanistan came from the White House, whose principal occupant was especially inclined to worry that aggressive military actions on the ground would entangle the United States in protracted wars. Captain Robert A. Newson, the commander of the US special operations headquarters in Yemen from 2010 to 2012, advocated assistance to Yemeni forces in counterinsurgency so that those forces could eject Al Qaeda, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, and other insurgent groups. Surgical strikes alone could not keep the enemy at bay, argued Newson, because “you cannot hold the jungle back with a weed whacker.” The White House rejected Newson’s recommendation out of concern that it would draw the United States into conflicts with rebel groups that did not already have plans to attack the United States. For several years, the Obama administration would rely on precision drone strikes as the main counterterrorist weapon in Yemen.

  The unwillingness of the United States to help the Yemeni government assert control over its population impeded the collection of intelligence for the surgical strikes, a fact that contributed to the high number of drone missiles that mistakenly hit civilian targets, including a passenger bus and a wedding party. The killing of innocent civilians by drones so enraged Yemeni tribes that they sent young men in droves to serve in Al Qaeda. During the peak period of the drone campaign, the strength of Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch increased from 300 to more than 1,000. Widespread condemnation of the drone program in Yemen, on practical as well as moral grounds, eventually convinced the Obama administration to curtail the number of strikes.

  The lack of counterinsurgency operations in Yemen ultimately allowed the insurgent jungle to swallow up the national government. At the beginning of 2015, Houthi rebels seized the capital city of Sanaa and dismembered the central administration, resulting in the collapse of the national armed forces and intelligence services. The Houthis and Al Qaeda looted $500 million worth of US military equipment from military arsenals. Flinging open the doors to the regime’s jails, they set free extremists who had taken years, and in some cases large amounts of US assistance, to incarcerate. The Obama administration evacuated all US government personnel, including the CIA and special operations personnel who had directed the surgical strikes.

  The few ground raids that special operations forces actually conducted outside of Iraq and Afghanistan in Obama’s second term showed raiding to be enormously difficult in places where the absence of counterinsurgency operations left insurgents fully in charge. In Somalia, occasional raids by US and European special operations forces against extremists were often cut short by the need to escape before a hostile armed population surrounded and overpowered them. On the night of October 5, 2013, for instance, a team of Navy SEALs that went ashore in the coastal city of Baraawe to target an extremist commander had to turn back after a sentry’s opening shots drew much of the local community to the scene, assault rifles in hand.

  While the overwhelming majority of raids in the Obama era were aimed at capturing or killing the enemy, a small number sought to liberate Americans or other westerners held hostage by extremists. The rescue of Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted in January 2012 stood out as a notable victory, as did the liberation of five British and American aid workers in Afghanistan in May and December of that year.

  Several other rescue missions did not end as happily. In the early summer of 2014, two dozen Delta operators raided an oil refinery in northern Syria where they thought ISIS was holding journalist James Foley and other American hostages. The raiding force discovered that the hostages were gone, having been relocated on a prior date. A few months later, ISIS beheaded Foley and posted a video of the act online.

  On December 6, 2014, forty Navy SEALs raided an Al Qaeda prison camp in Yemen, where they hoped to find American Luke Somers and South African Pierre Korkie. As the rescue team advanced on the ground, a guard dog barked, putting an end to any sleepiness or complacency that might have encumbered the Al Qaeda guards. One guard, discerning that American forces were attempting a hostage rescue, shot Somers and Korkie. The special operators quickly vanquished the guards, and when they found Somers and Korkie discovered that the two men were still alive, but just barely. Medics rushed the bleeding men out on a V-22 Osprey. Korkie died on the aircraft, and Somers died on an operating table aboard the USS Makin Island.

  The renewed need for special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the multitude of tasks that the White House kept assigning the special operations forces dashed hopes that the frequent deployments of the post-9/11 era would come to an end. While the special operators were not deploying as frequently as at the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an average of 7,200 were deployed at one time in 2015, far above the 2,900 of 2001. Unfavorable rates of divorce, mental illness, and other maladies continued.

  Late in Obama’s second term, special operations forces were swept up in the White House push for integrating women into combat units. During Defense Department reviews of the matter in 2015, a Rand Corporation survey of 7,600 special operations troops found that 85 percent of those in combat specialties opposed allowing women into combat positions. The opposition was based not only on personal views about gender differences and roles, but also on actual experiences in the latest wars, where women had been placed alongside special operations combat units as members of Cultural Support Teams and other programs to interact with female civilians in countries that abhorred contact between their women and American military men.

  The special operators who opposed the change, of whom a substantial number were women, predicted a host of adverse consequences. Among those most commonly cited were declines in unit cohesion, reductions in entrance standards in the name of gender diversity, illicit sexual liaisons, and interpersonal conflicts. Such problems had already emerged in the Cultural Support Team program. In addition, more t
han 80 percent of the survey respondents said that women did not have the physical strength required for combat jobs. “I weigh 225 pounds, and 280 pounds in full kit, as did most of the members of my ODA,” one respondent said. “I expect every person on my team to be able to drag any member of my team out of a firefight. A 130 pound female could not do it, I don’t care how much time she spends in the gym. Do we expect a wounded man to bleed out because a female soldier could not drag him to cover?”

  In December 2015, Obama decreed that women would be allowed into all combat positions in the military, special operations forces included. For the special operators, of whom so much was still asked, the indifference to their opinions was another indication that the White House’s love affair with special operations forces was over.

  FOLLOWING OPERATION NEPTUNE Spear, President Barack Obama designated the surgical strike America’s principal counterterrorism weapon, asserting that it could attain strategic objectives independently of other scalpels and hammers. Obama cited the replacement of counterinsurgency with light-footprint counterterrorism in justifying the withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking advantage of the secrecy inherent in America’s special operations forces, he involved the United States in military operations without informing the public, presumably because keeping military forces hidden from view would prevent the American people from questioning the reopening of wars that he had previously declared over. When special operations forces began to suffer fatalities, discontent arose in an American public that wished to remain apprised of its nation’s participation in combat.

  Surgical strikes remained JSOC’s top priority throughout Obama’s presidency, but the number of strikes declined as America’s presence in Afghanistan shrank and JSOC ran into high obstacles erected by foreign governments, the State Department, and the White House. As Village Stability Operations came to an end in Afghanistan, the special operations units that had been assigned to that program looked for new places where they could work by, with, and through partners. The rise of ISIS appeared to portend opportunities in Iraq, Syria, and beyond, but those opportunities were slow to develop because of White House reluctance to deploy large numbers of troops into danger zones.

  The Bin Laden raid was a tactical success that may have had some strategic benefit in weakening Al Qaeda, but its negative strategic consequences likely outweighed its benefits. By antagonizing the Pakistani government, it gravely undermined US counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan, ensuring that Al Qaeda could stay in business under new management. In Afghanistan, SOF strike forces took huge bites out of the enemy, yet they could not have decisive strategic effects because of the premature withdrawal of US forces from counterinsurgency. In Yemen, reliance on precision counterterrorism in the absence of counterinsurgency resulted in total failure, as insurgents tore down the whole government and sent the Americans packing.

  Because of President Obama’s emphasis on surgical strikes, conventional forces served increasingly often in supporting roles to special operations forces. The lavishing of praise, funding, and power on special operations forces after the Bin Laden raid led Admiral McRaven to seek new resources and authorities, and to trample over the rest of the military in the process. SOCOM alienated not only the Pentagon but also Congress, which used its constitutional prerogatives to stifle much of McRaven’s agenda. After a brief period in which special operations forces appeared to be the kings of the mountain, they were thrown from the crest, compelled to go back to working in cooperation with the rest of their military brethren.

  CHAPTER 11

  CONCLUSION

  Historical facts, and generalizations derived from those facts, do not provide ready-made formulas for future action. Indeed, those who have endeavored to generate such formulas have a lengthy record of committing strategic errors, the result of assuming similarities between situations that are dissimilar in part or in whole. Acquisition of historical understanding, nevertheless, is the most important step in developing the familiarization that is essential to making sound decisions in a complex environment. Individuals who have examined a variety of historical situations can draw on a broader range of tools and gauge the effectiveness of the tools more accurately than individuals who have not. Their awareness of past failures reduces the likelihood that they will repeat the errors of the past.

  PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

  From the beginning, American presidents and their top appointees have guided the development of special operations forces, devoting to them amounts of attention well out of proportion to the size of those forces. President Franklin Roosevelt and his top military adviser, General George Marshall, sired a large family of special operations forces in World War II, mainly for reasons of alliance politics, in the case of the Rangers, Forcemen, and Marauders, or amateurish fascination, in the case of the Raiders and the OSS special operations forces. Among the special operations units of World War II, only the Navy’s Frogmen were formed as the result of dispassionate assessment of their military usefulness. It was not coincidental that the Frogmen were the most effective and strategically valuable special operations forces of the war.

  Of all US presidents, only John F. Kennedy arrived in office with a strong interest in special operations forces, and for that reason he would do more than any other president to further their cause. Multiplying the Army Special Forces and forming new units in the Navy and Air Force, he built special operations forces up to sizes that would safeguard them from the disbandment that had stricken some of their forerunners. Kennedy broadened the geographic reach of the special operations forces and shifted their operational focus to a new mission, counterinsurgency, for which their services were much needed in light of the Communist world’s support for third-world insurgencies.

  Although none of Kennedy’s successors entered the presidency with much knowledge of or affection for special operations forces, the onset of war or other national emergencies drove many of them to take an interest. The inability of diplomacy to resolve the Iran hostage crisis led Jimmy Carter to turn to special operations forces for a last-ditch rescue mission. When airpower could not defeat Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles, President George H. W. Bush called upon JSOC. Bill Clinton summoned Delta Force to get rid of the warlord who was interfering with the administration’s nation-building project in Somalia. George W. Bush sent the Special Forces into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks because they were the military force capable of striking back most quickly at the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The need to hit Al Qaeda around the world led Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to transform JSOC into a global manhunting force.

  Special operations forces became instruments of partisan politics for a few presidents. In the case of Lyndon Johnson, the secrecy surrounding special operations forces made them an attractive weapon for jabbing North Vietnam during the presidential campaign of 1964, when he wanted Vietnam to stay out of the newspapers. Barack Obama was drawn to the use of surgical strikes because, among other things, they enabled him to show the American public that he was combating terrorism forcefully and efficiently. When conditions deteriorated in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria late in his presidency, Obama sent special operations forces into combat surreptitiously—and in contravention of public promises that US troops would not participate in combat—for what appeared to be reasons of political self-interest. Revelations of these activities, via the deaths of special operators, damaged confidence in the government and its commander-in-chief among Americans who expected their government to be transparent on the use of American troops in combat.

  Special operators have learned the hard way that large reservoirs of presidential support for special operations forces can evaporate at a moment’s notice. The early enthusiasm of the Roosevelt, Clinton, and Obama administrations gave way to indifference, the result of disappointing performances or changes in White House priorities. In a few instances, the special operators even became scapegoats for failed policies. Wit
h the loss of presidential backing, special operations forces lost resources and prestige, and were exposed to the kicks and punches of bureaucratic adversaries. The special operations forces of the future will have to make the case for their importance to each new president and strive to maintain presidential favor by proving their importance to national security, while keeping in mind the possibility that a president can lose interest or turn against them despite their best efforts.

  History suggests that future presidents will be prone to making decisions on the sizes and activities of special operations forces based on superficial and romanticized views of those forces. To avert that outcome, presidents and their staffs will need to receive sober assessments of SOF capabilities and strategic utility, which they must then incorporate into the decision-making process. Presidents, being highly political animals, will continue to face temptations to use special operations forces to serve partisan political agendas. For the good of the republic and the special operations forces, they would be well advised to resist those temptations.

  ROLES AND MISSIONS

  From their founding, special operations forces have struggled to find roles and missions that matched both their capabilities and the nation’s strategic needs. Special operations doctrine writers, Pentagon hairsplitters, and guardians of bureaucratic turf have repeatedly tried to solidify roles and missions by promulgating definitions of special operations. Congress and the Department of Defense have also attempted to delineate special operations by specifying a set of SOF missions.