Matthew Gault
Security, Middle East
Washington is deploying more soldiers to fight Islamic State. On December 1, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the Pentagon would send a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” of two-hundred U.S. commandos to Iraq.
According to Carter, the soldiers will “conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture ISIL leaders” and “conduct unilateral operations into Syria.”
American elite troops have long operated in Iraq and Syria and the arrival of more isn’t a surprise. But what, specifically, will these soldiers do? Can two-hundred commandos change the tide of the war? According to Malcolm Nance, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer and counter-terrorism expert, those soldiers could make all the difference.
Nance is no stranger to Islamist terror—he literally wrote the book on the subject—and has lived in and around the Middle East for the past ten years. He says he’s got a plan that would change the dynamic of the war. It starts with U.S. commandos.
“The special operations forces in Iraq need to be unleashed,” Nance tells War Is Boring. “[They] need to be cut loose.”
But Nance says the United States can’t do it alone. The American special operations forces need to partner with the Iraqi special forces, the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish fighters. That’s happening to some extent, Nance says, but it needs to happen more for his plan to work.
“What we need to do is marry up equal numbers of forces—if not on a three to one basis, so three Iraqis for every U.S special operations trooper—then start carrying out unconventional missions in ISIS’s rear.”
The root of the problem is that the U.S.-led coalition is relying mainly on Iraqi ground troops who lack tactical creativity. “Iraqi forces . . . are linearly disposed against ISIS in the cities. All they do is hammer each other back and forth. ISIS learned how to be asymmetrical. They’ve learned how to go around and flow like water, but they don’t like having it done to them.”
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