Special Forces are awesome. That’s pretty hard to
deny. Movies showcase how absolutely inferior the average American is to
Special Forces commandos in every single quantifiable measurement related to
awesomeness. Some of the most popular videogames, from SOCOM to Call of
Duty, allow us to pretend to be awesome by way of playable avatars.
Literary characters like Jason Bourne show us that books are not only
brutal weapons for fighting would be assassins, but also mediums for living
vicariously through awesome fictional special operatives. There is not a
whole lot of reason to really question President Obama’s fascination with the
Special Forces.
Recent articles by The Diplomat, Newsweek, and other sources have highlighted
growing reliance on the US Special Operations Forces, including Navy SEALS,
Army Green Berets and Rangers, and the Marines. Everyone knows about Seal
Team Six’s successful Bin Laden raid and their amazing sea sniping
skills. Less known is that in October of 2011, President Obama announced
that up to 100 Green Berets would be sent to Uganda to help train regional
forces to combat murderous rebel groups like the Lords Resistance Army.
Or that in January of this year, Special Operations Forces rescued two hostages
and kill nine Somali pirates in a nighttime helicopter raid. According to
ridiculously named pirate witness Bile Hussein, “The raiders came in very
quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having
chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening.” Awesome.
As their use and success rate continues to climb, the Obama
Administration and the Pentagon have indicated that the draw down in
conventional forces brought on by political and budgetary considerations will
likely be offset by an uptick in SOF related missions. In fact, the USS Ponce,
a decommissioned 40-year-old battleship, is currently being retrofitted to act
as a floating “mother ship” to deploy SEALS, Rangers, and other special forces
in the Middle East, as necessary. This awesome mother ship of awesome
commandos jumping on fast boats and doing things that are awesome really only
exposes the tip of a very awesome iceberg though. The Pentagon is
reporting that it plans to build dedicated floating bases in a number of
strategic regions to help facilitate and coordinate Special Forces operations
by 2013.
From a purely logical standpoint, the transition towards
Special Forces makes practical sense. The American populace is generally
uneasy when it comes to full scale, brute force destruction, and the loss of
human life that generally accompanies it. Thus, the surgical precision of
Special Forces showcases the US as not only the most powerful military force on
the planet, but the best trained, capable, and humane.
Some have urged President Obama to exercise caution in his use
of Special Forces though. Retired Lt. Gen. Dave Barno, of the Center for
New American Security, says that the emphasis for the SOF should be “quality,
not quantity,” and that SOF resources can easily become overstretched. “Its
manpower has nearly doubled, its budget has nearly tripled, and its overseas
deployments have quadrupled,” reports Barno. Furthermore, an article last week in the Washington Times interviewed an unnamed spouse
of a special operations member, who lamented that “the pace of deployments for
the past decade has been relentless… and it has taken a toll on both of us and
certainly on our marriage and on his relationship with our children.”
While the use of SOF rightly represents an extremely important
facet of future American military planning, President Obama stands in a
precarious position. Plans to add 8,800 SOF troops over the next four
years (2,500 this year, 2,300 in 2013, and 2,000 in 2014 and 2015) will
actively strengthen our stock of mission capable specialists, but there exists
a real risk of diluting its strength in exchange for numbers. President
Obama and all future leaders will need to guarantee that US SOCOM continues to create
the most feared deployable commandos in the world, if they hope to use them to their full advantage. In the meantime, many,
including this author, often confuse fact and fiction when it comes to the
awesomeness of our special operatives. While I’m sure plenty of SEALS,
Rangers, and Marines share many qualities of Dutch from Predator, the rest
likely are affected by battlefield fatigue and stresses from home. I love
reading about helicopter raids on shanty pirate forts as much as the next
person, but like tennis elbow, over use and under preparation can have
detrimental effects on your game.
Posts
1 comment:
One other implication in increasing the amount of Special Forces is that their visibility is heightened in the international arena and the possibility of their credibility can be questioned. Dubbed the "Quiet Professionals", the Special Forces do not wish to have undue attention on their efforts. They rely on building trust with their national clients and that has the potential to be undermined by a more visible presence. If the intent would be to increase rotations or to have them be more far flung around the globe, consistency in operations could be compromised, with Soldier continuity and frequency of return to the same area degraded.
Of course, the wives and families will be happy to have added numbers, because that means their husbands/fathers will be home more.
Post a Comment