Attention, folks! We have boots on the ground in Syria now. Lots of them, with the potential for many more.
Marines have arrived in Northern Syria to assist in the fight against ISIS to reclaim Raqqa.
A couple hundred Marines have deployed into Syria with heavy artillery guns, as part of the ongoing preparation for the fight to oust the Islamic State group from its self-declared headquarters of Raqqa, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
The deployment is temporary. But it is likely an early indication that the White House is leaning toward giving the Pentagon greater flexibility to make routine combat decisions in the IS fight. Military commanders frustrated by what they considered micromanagement under the previous administration have argued for greater freedom to make daily decisions on how best to fight the enemy.
The Marines moving into Syria are pre-positioning howitzers to be ready to assist local Syrian forces, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the deployment publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.
In addition, the U.S. is preparing to send hundreds of U.S. troops to Kuwait in order to be ready to join the Islamic State fight if they are needed, the official said. The number would be fewer than 1,000, the official said.
The latest troop movements come on the heels of the recent temporary deployment of some dozens of Army forces to the outskirts of Manbij, Syria, in what the Pentagon called a "reassure and deter" mission. Flying American flags and moving in large, heavily armored vehicles, the troops were there to keep a lid on tensions in the area, the Pentagon said.
It appeared the forces were largely there to insure that Turkish fighters and Syrian opposition groups focused on battling IS rather than each other.
So, now we're unofficially but officially in the ground war in Syria. This will just be the beginning of what I expect to to be an ongoing escalation in the area by the Trump administration.
Shouldn't this be a bigger deal than it is? Trump, like his Republican predecessors, will be a warmongering fool. Don't buy all the nonsense about isolationism he spews. It looks to me like he's perfectly fine sending forces wherever in the world he thinks are necessary, beginning with Syria.
