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Home Front
Military split on use of special forces
2004-01-06
With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pressuring the Pentagon to take a more aggressive role in tracking down terrorists, military and intelligence officials are engaged in a fierce debate over when and how elite military units should be deployed for maximum effectiveness. Under Rumsfeld’s direction, secret commando units known as hunter-killer teams have been ordered to "kick down the doors," as the generals put it, all over the world in search of al Qaeda members and their sympathizers.
Yes! Yes! Ye-e-e-essss!
The approach has succeeded in recent months in Iraq, as Special Operations forces have helped capture Saddam Hussein and other Baathist loyalists. But in other parts of the world, particularly Afghanistan, these soldiers and their civilian advocates have complained to superiors that the Pentagon’s counterterrorism policy is too inflexible in the use of Special Forces overall and about what units are allowed to chase down suspected terrorists, according to former commandos and a Defense Department official. In fact, these advocates said the U.S. military may have missed chances to capture two of its most-wanted fugitives — Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden — during the past two years because of restrictions on Green Berets in favor of two other components of the Special Operations Command, the Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. They said several credible sightings by CIA and military informants of Omar entering a mosque this spring in Kandahar, Afghanistan, were relayed to U.S. forces at nearby Firebase Gecko, where a Green Beret team was ready to deploy. But rather than send in the Green Berets, who were just minutes from the mosque, commanders followed strict military doctrine and called on the Delta Force, the team of commandos whose primary mission is to kill and capture targets such as Hussein. In the several hours it took the Delta unit, based hundreds of miles away near Kabul, to review the information and prepare for the raid, Omar vanished, said the sources, all of whom advise Rumsfeld’s senior aides.

Other informants reported spotting Zawahiri in a medical clinic in Gardez, Afghanistan, in the spring of 2002. Green Berets five minutes away were ordered to stand down so SEAL Team Six, another of the hunter-killer teams, could storm the clinic and capture or kill Zawahiri, according to the sources. But too much time elapsed during preparations, and Zawahiri escaped. The Special Operations Command declined to comment on the reports.

Both incidents spotlight the ongoing debate over how best to employ Special Operations forces in the global war against terrorism. Special Operations forces refer to a range of soldiers from the Army, Navy and Air Force who are specially trained for sensitive missions, typically secret in nature and frequently involving rescues or assaults on high-value enemy targets. The military’s policy, in practice, mandates using only "Special Mission Units," such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six, to apprehend or assassinate specially targeted individuals. It precludes other Special Forces such as Green Berets — who are trained primarily to work with indigenous fighters — from pursuing the most sought-after targets when opportunities arise. Some experts on counterterrorism contend that it takes the Special Mission Units too long to deploy for unanticipated raids. Some believe equal, if not more, emphasis should be placed on Special Operations forces to develop relationships with local villagers who supply the bulk of valuable information, which is known as counterinsurgency work. In the past year, poor intelligence has often led to the wrong targets being killed or captured. "For all of the Special Mission Units’ efforts, how many high-value targets did they get in Afghanistan?" asked one adviser, a civilian advocate of aggressive unconventional warfare with the Special Operations Command. "None."

Supporters say units such as Delta are the only ones trained specifically to carry out the apprehension or assassination of high-value targets. "By doctrine and training, targets like that belong to the Special Mission Units," said Richard H. Shultz Jr., a scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Pentagon consultant. "That’s what they are for."
In that case, change the doctrine and training. High value targets should be grabbed by whatever resource is closest, whether it's specifically a hunter-killer team or Private Shlabotnik down at the motor pool. Flexibility can't be sacrificed out of concern for who's got the appropriate Dewey button...
The Pentagon’s official position is that there is no conflict between the two approaches.
Nor should there be...
Marshall Billingslea, formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said both approaches are being followed and both are vital to achieving success against terrorist organizations. "The hearts and minds element is essential," Billingslea said. But according to a classified Defense Department policy briefing on the war against the al Qaeda terrorist network and Baathist insurgents in Iraq, the Bush administration is moving away from work with insurgents and favoring more direct-action strikes.
Which should also be developing their own super-dooper-secret intel, bumping off specific targets in the dead of night or arranging Unfortunate Accidents™ to unobtrusively remove them from the scene...
Rumsfeld has long been enamored of the idea of expanding the role of Special Operations forces in fighting terrorists. He has dramatically boosted the budget of the forces and last year ordered the Special Operations Command to draft a strategy to send hunter-killer teams after terrorist cells.
Yo! Over here! Y'want me to write something up?
He is considering expanding their role even more. Among proposals under review is to send the Special Mission Units into areas such as Somalia and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where little government authority exists and terrorists congregate, seemingly safe from the long arm of the United States, said officials who are reviewing the plan or have been briefed on it. "There have been briefings about various operations against various targets," a State Department official said. "We’re prepared to go into these areas," he said, but in a careful way.

Over the years, such proposals have faced roadblocks, including a shortage of resources, legal questions on Capitol Hill about assassinations, intelligence shortcomings and worries about the political willpower of some officials at the State Department and Pentagon. According to four officials who have seen it, a top-secret report by Shultz, the Pentagon consultant, contends that despite reliable intelligence on those responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, Special Mission Units were never sent to kill or capture the terrorists responsible.
There’s a lot more at the link, but I thought that some of this information would be quite interesting for Rantburgers.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#11  The problem is in command structure. SOCOM is a separate entity in the armed forces. The problem arises with our cold ware era command structure in the sense that we have theater commands, eg. CentCom for Middle Eastern areas and Central Asia/Africa. SOCOM doesn't necessarily fall under these guys command structures so the regular brass is loathe to use them more agressively. And when they DO use them you got to keep a relatively good logistics tail on them at all times to provide them with everything from food, intel, firepower as needed or even extraction resources. Basically the only way to get around these problems is to rearrange the command structure to take advantage of SOCOM but this probably wont happen for another 10 years at our rates :(
Posted by: Val   2004-1-6 3:10:26 PM  

#10  Grab a handful of your AK-47 buddies and go kill'm. Oldspook, you should be writing screenplays in Hollywood, Your poetry!
Posted by: Lucky   2004-1-6 1:30:14 PM  

#9  GB's and Rangers could have handled the job just fine.Some paper-pusher or someone trying to feather his nest screwed the pooch,and should be court-martialed.
Posted by: raptor   2004-1-6 12:50:14 PM  

#8  At least when I was in, there were "door kicker" SF teams that trained for snatch type missions. BTW, the soldiers used in the Entebbe raid were all line paratroopers and infantry: The units should be drawn from Yoni Netanyahu’s paratroops, another paratroop unit and the Golani Infantry Brigade. Golani had endured a long tradition of being the unit to which all rejects from other IDF echelons had been sent. In the years preceding the Yom Kippur War, the brigade had demonstrated a remarkable ability to “pull itself up by its own bootstraps” and was now recognized as an elite unit. The choice for the Entebbe operation was yet another recognition of its new status in the IDF. (from the IDF official history) Finally, the German unit that pulled off the raid that utterly destroyed the SAS BULLBASKET mission in WWII was composed of a bunch of landser invalided off the Russian front. It's all leadership and METT-TW.
Posted by: 11A5S   2004-1-6 12:46:03 PM  

#7  Ridiculous. Where do people think Delta comes from? SPECIAL FORCES. And when their hitch in Delta is over, where to they go? SPECIAL FORCES! So it's pretty disingenous (not to mention moronic) to suggest that the skillset isn't there.

This sounds like some command (SOCOM?) doesn't want any of the juicy, headline grabbing missions being grabbed by someone else. How do you justify that next star, not to mention the big budget, if the damn Special Forces are out there nabbing the Bad Guys?! In other words, your classic intra-service turfwar pissing contest.

SF trains for a multiple of missions, including working with indigenous forces, unconventional war (guerrilla/counterinsurgency), reconnaissance, and DIRECT ACTION. If they get sniffs of the Bad Guys sitting close, it's criminal that they aren't allowed to move in and take them down. After all, it wasn't Delta or ST6 that nabbed saddam, it was regular old infantry.
Posted by: 4thInfVet   2004-1-6 12:10:12 PM  

#6  I think the Rumsfeld memo was an example of a good leader recognizing this type of problem and working to fix it.

Good officers do what's right and worry about their career once they retire. If they buck authority along the way, they get a better book deal and improved speaking fees.
Posted by: Super Hose   2004-1-6 11:54:03 AM  

#5  This is more pentagon deskbound idiots who want to "use the right tool for the job". Its a case of "The best is the enemy of the good". They want to use "The Best" when "Good enough" would get the job done.

There is no doubt that Rangers or SF units could have done the job in as well as Delta or ST6 ops. could, if you only consider the final objective (kill or capture the target).

The difference would have been casualties and "splash" (publicity, collateral damage, public knowledge).

Delta/ST6 would have sustained and inflicted minimal casualties, and been in and out of there before much of a reaction was raised, and with little collateral damage. SF/Rangers would have had some killed, and likely killed a ton at the target, plus would have damaged a lot more, and taken a while to clear out (which woudl have possibly allowed some more locals to get themselves into the fight - and get killed).

Also the nature of the 2 groups is different: SF/Rangers are combat units. ST6/Delta are "raid" units. The former can move on a lot less notice, the latter require planning and rehearsal. The former tend to be a bit more blunt, the latter more "surgical". The former will leave very solid evidence of their presence and will take longer to extract, the latter can whisper in and out if they have time for proper plan and execution.

These decisions were purely political. In my opinion some of the generals at the pentagon have lost their balls - under clinton they developed the habit of not leaving footprints, or causing casualties (on either side), or making any political waves. During those 8 years, those who have risen General and Colonel rank prior to 2000, were politicians and better off covering their asses than charging hard.

Whats needed now is hard chargers, not deskbound paperpushers who err on the side of caution. This is a war. We need more Leaders and less Followers.

What happened is some command element decided "Lets play it safe - Delta/ST6 can do this with a lot less noise and casualties, and besides thats what the book says to do, so my ass is covered by bouncing this one to somone else - the important thing is to follow the book"

A hard charger would have said "SF and the Rangers can do this - Delta is too far off and doesnt have the intel yet or time to prep. Send in the SF unit - casualties will be higher and we will have a harder time extracting them, so have the Rangers ready to extract them and get some heavy air support on call too - the important thing is to get these bastards. Let the higher ups know that there's going to be a ruckus in Haji-ville when we kick the door in on this mosque, and likely a lot of dead Mahmoods."

There's the difference. Its a shame that the higher ups are more concerned with method than results in cases like this.
Posted by: OldSpook   2004-1-6 11:52:40 AM  

#4  .COM, if the Green Berets went in anyway and things went badly (like Mogadishu) there would have been all sorts of hell to pay. I'm not saying the Green Berets shouldn't have been given the assignment, but jumping ahead and doing it despite orders would be Hollywood stupid.
Posted by: ruprecht   2004-1-6 11:35:01 AM  

#3  .com, I agree. There are tons of Pentacrats that don't like to share glory or missions. Osama may be accross the street from an HQ but they need to call in the 'special squad' to take him down. It's all about rice bowls with these idiots. Stay in yours you can't have any of mine. The Pentacrats in charge of the ground troops don't help matters either. Can you imagine a battallion CO in WWII calling in for permission to capture Hitler? That is what this sounds like they have now.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter)   2004-1-6 10:18:29 AM  

#2  Somehow I think if they had captured Omar or Zawahiri, all would have been forgiven.
Posted by: eyeyeye   2004-1-6 9:53:59 AM  

#1  Although there might, indeed, be some dumbass doctrine (the Pentagon has hordes who codify brainfarts in triplicate) that specifies certain forces in certain situation, this sounds like inter-service rivalry, sour grapes, and gamesmanship.

Does anyone here think, in the circumstances cited above for the Omar sighting in Kandahar, that going ahead and capturing the shithead would have been met with some kind of punishment or reprimand? Not a chance - a success like this makes a mighty fine insurance policy, not to mention casting the desired doubt on the stupidity of inflexibility. Failure, on the other hand, could be due to poor / garbled communications or other vagaries encountered by field locations. Been there, done that, myownself. Anyone here with field time who hasn't improvised when faced with stupid and self-defeating orders? I should exempt the Navy guys, cuz it's pretty hard to commandeer a seagoing vessel for private missions... But a fire-team and a chopper? Hey, that's a snap when the Top Dog wants to hunt.

It's almost always easier to get forgiveness than permission. I know there are exceptions, but hours versus minutes made all the difference - and that was more than obvious to the commander on the scene. I think this instance was the Firebase Gecko Commander's way of saying "Fuck You and your policy, gentlemen." - and if that message and the ramifications didn't get all the way to the top, then there are some seriously gutless turds in that chain of command. I detect a distinct lack of Colonel Wests...
Posted by: .com   2004-1-6 3:50:40 AM  

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