Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey says no ground troops
to fight Iraq except maybe on a "case-by-case" basis.
Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Martin Dempsey said that while President Obama has ruled out sending ground troops to fight the fanatics of ISIS in Iraq, the president has also said “to come back to him on a case-by-case basis." Spencer Ackerman
reports:
Dempsey, who has long been reluctant to re-introduce US forces into Middle Eastern wars, signaled that some of the 1,600 US military “advisers” Obama deployed to Iraq since June may directly fight Isis, despite Obama’s frequent public assurances that US ground troops will not engage in combat.
“If we reach the point where I believe our advisors should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific [Isis] targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey said, preferring the term “close combat advising.”
Dempsey said the air war in Iraq and Syria “won’t look like a shock and awe campaign,” but will instead be “persistent and sustainable.” He envisaged no end for it, but said Isis’ ultimate defeat will be a “generational” effort during which “moderate” Muslims abandon its ideology—raising questions about what the US military’s actual endpoint will be in pursuing the goal of “degrading and ultimately defeating” Isis, Obama’s stated goal.
Any Americans not fully persuaded by the president's assertion that no U.S. ground troops will be sent back into Iraq as part of the administration's campaign to degrade and defeat ISIS now have another reason to worry about "mission creep." Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry
said:
Kerry reiterated that Obama has said no U.S. combat troops would be deployed to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, before adding, “Unless, obviously, something very, very dramatic changes.”
That formulation hasn’t been used previously by administration officials in discussing the growing U.S. confrontation with the Islamic State, and it’s sure to feed concerns that the United States may be making a greater commitment to a new conflict in the Middle East than it first intended.
So, no ground troops will be sent.
Unless.
Wed Sep 17, 2014 at 12:57 AM PT: From The New York Times: The challenge will come, General Dempsey said, when Iraqi and Kurdish forces try to drive the militants out of densely populated urban areas like Mosul. In those cases, General Dempsey said, he might recommend deploying Special Operations troops to provide what he called “close combat advising,” essentially working alongside Iraqi commanders in the field and helping them direct their troops to targets.
While the Americans would not fire weapons themselves, military experts said there was little practical distinction between the role General Dempsey described at the hearing and actual combat.
“We’ve already got ground forces introduced, and they are performing combat missions,” Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army general who helped train the Iraqi security forces and is now a senior adviser to the National Security Network, said on Tuesday. “I applaud the general for his candor. That will help the president and the debate greatly.”