03/13/17 – Hope Hodge Seck on the howitzer-armed US Marines in Syria preparing to fight ISIS – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, introducing again Hope Hodgsek from military.com.
Welcome back to the show, Hope.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
Really appreciate you making time for us today.
So another big one here, U.S. Marines move into Syria with howitzers.
So we have had special operations forces there for I don't know how many couple of years at least embedded with the Kurds, but now they're sending in the infantry, U.S. Marines.
Please tell us all about it.
Everything you know.
Absolutely.
So this was news first broken by the Washington Post, I believe last week, and there had started to be trickles and rumors that there were more conventional style U.S. forces in Syria.
You're absolutely right.
You've got those special operations troops on the ground, and that's a small number, like a couple hundred that have been there for a while as the U.S. has been conducting airstrikes and everything else.
And then all of a sudden you get reports that there are army striker vehicles in Manbij, which is a Kurdish controlled town about 90 miles away from Raqqa, the head of kind of the ISIS caliphate.
And then you've got officials confirming that there's basically Marines who have left their ship deployed in the Middle East and are setting up an artillery base.
So as far as we know right now, there are about 700 to 800 U.S. troops in Syria.
That includes the special operations troops that were there before.
That includes elements of the 75th Ranger Regiment with those striker vehicles in Manbij.
And somewhere not too far from Raqqa, the capital, you've got this new Marine Corps artillery base.
Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah, I just only learned recently from a friend straightening all this out for me that the 75th Ranger Battalion, that they are the top tier special forces like SEAL Team 6 and the Delta Force.
That's, yes, that's absolutely right.
Okay.
All right.
So, so we got the Army Special Forces.
And I guess, do we know what other special operations JSOC forces we have there other than Army?
There's these 75th Rangers and the Delta Force, and is there SEALs too, or do you know about that?
That's something they typically don't talk about.
I think what you expect to see there is small elements, maybe of a number of different services, special operations.
And those folks, a lot of them might just be working directly with the majority kind of troops on the ground that are prosecuting the fight in advisory capacity roles, assistance, you know, sometimes coordinating air, forward air control.
So, so they're very much in small elements in taking a background role in the fight that's going on.
Is anybody at the Pentagon talking about when they're actually going to go ahead and charge Mosul?
I mean, pardon me, Raqqa?
That's a good question.
I think the fact that you're seeing that artillery base being set up, if you take a page from Mosul, and of course that was the huge stronghold in Iraq that ISIS is holding, and in fact is still under siege now, this is kind of the way they prosecuted the fight, was they sent in a very temporary artillery base right before the big surge push.
In that way, you get, you know, you've got those M777 howitzers that have those very powerful rounds that can travel anywhere from 25 to 40 miles, and you've got your airstrikes.
Those are things that the forces on the ground are not capable of providing on their own.
So this is essentially our new model for how we set up, you know, kind of these U.S. supported fights.
Let me ask you this.
It seems like if they're putting infantry on the ground there, and the real distinction obviously is numbers and specialties and that kind of thing, but also one is purportedly deniable, the other are not, right, an artillery base, an infantry artillery base.
If that's, if we don't have permission from Assad, then that's an invasion, kind of, right?
Although we're fighting his enemies, so, you know, I'm not saying he would mind all that much, but I guess what I'm wondering is, is there a new, at least, handshake deal with Assad to allow this escalation, or they're just doing it despite him, or what do you think?
It's extraordinarily delicate, that much I can tell you.
In fact, I was listening to a hearing in which the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, was talking about the delicacy of how to deal with Syria, and he basically said Webster's Dictionary should redefine the word wicked to define this problem.
And so do I know if there's a new deal?
That much has not been made public yet.
There are troop caps.
That's something, you know, self-imposed by the Pentagon, that you can't have more than, I believe it's 500 troops in Syria, you know, and technically none of them are in boots on the ground.
And that's something that has been temporarily lifted to prosecute this assault on Raqqa.
In this, I don't know if you knew this, but we're now learning that there are some 2,500 troops with the 82nd Airborne that are standing by in Kuwait to potentially move in to either Iraq or Syria to continue this fight.
And so are we entering a different, like a new category of this war?
It's possible.
And I think there are a lot of reasons that military commanders are very nervous about what the outcome of that would be.
Is anybody talking about, man, what are we going to do after we're done rousting the Islamic State out of Mosul and Raqqa?
We can't, you know, just disintegrate them.
They won't be a state anymore, but there will still be this group there.
And are they adopting this pile doctrine nonsense about now we own it and we have to stay in these cities forever again and wage a counterinsurgency doctrine style, you know, occupation and nation building effort?
Are they going to abandon the place to the Shiite militias or have they thought this far ahead?
Great question.
This is something that General Dunford addressed directly a few weeks ago in the same address that I referenced.
And he basically said the goal right now is to weaken the Islamic State or ISIS to the point that the local forces on the ground and eventually, you know, maybe even civilian law enforcement, kind of like local smallest element forces can deal with them, can defend against them on their own terms.
And after that, we're out.
So you're hearing kind of a very different kind of language about what our intentions are that it's just to get rid of the threat, at least to the point that the local people can deal with it.
Will that work?
And will that seem like a good idea a year from now or two years from now?
That remains to be seen.
Man, well, I mean, if you go back to the journalism about how they took Raqqa, there were just a few hundred of them that were able to seize the city.
So in the first place, so anyway, I don't know.
All right.
Can I ask you to tell me more about the U.S. Marines that have been sent to the Helmand province in southern Afghanistan?
Absolutely.
Now, they haven't arrived yet.
I believe they are supposed to deploy next month, although the Marine Corps never officially releases really precise deployment dates.
So you've got about 300 Marines.
Most of them are infantry and you've got some support elements and they're going to be called Task Force Southwest.
They're going back to Helmand province.
That's the very violent, very kinetic, as they say, province in the south of Afghanistan where the Marines did most of their fighting.
And they're going to be taking up a position that's been held by an army task force called Task Force Forge.
So their job is essentially to back up the Afghan National Army troops on the ground, push back the insurgents who have, ever since the Marines left in 2014, they have made an incredible comeback.
So that's what they're doing.
And they're essentially helping the Afghan forces to hold the line.
To hold the line.
Is it right that this means just to prevent the fall of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital?
Or something else?
That is a huge part of it.
So it's not just Lashkar Gah.
There are a lot of regions in the area that the Marine Corps, prior to 2014, fought really hard to take and to drive the insurgents and the Taliban out.
And so I think that it's going to be a broader effort than just Lashkar Gah.
But you're right.
It's not only the provincial capital.
It's also the headquarters of the police force there.
So that's a very key piece of property.
And I think that's probably what's driving the push to send the Marines in now.
Okay.
So now General Nicholson and General Votel have both said that we need thousands more troops in Afghanistan.
But right now, I think we're all awaiting the report from Secretary of Defense Mattis to Trump.
This is the McChrystal report of 2017, basically saying what we have to do there.
And I wonder if you got a scoop for us about what that Mattis report is going to say.
Oh, I wish I did.
So it was commissioned on January 28th, a 30-day kind of assignment to come up with this report.
And so that means that it was completed somewhere around the end of February.
We know that the Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, was responsible for briefing the president.
However, if you listen to President Trump's language, it's unclear if he is ever going to speak directly about the contents of this report, because he's put a lot of stock in being unpredictable and taking actions without announcing them or telegraphing them in the first place.
So, you know, we can say, oh, you know, it's possible that some of the deployments and some of the staging that we're seeing now was a result of what he was briefed on.
But nobody yet has been able to fully connect those dots.
Hmm.
Boy, and how behind the curve I am, I thought that we're still waiting around.
The thing's already been briefed to him, but there's no real leaks about what it says?
We've got leaks about everything in the world about this administration.
I want to know what's in that Mattis report.
Where's Bob Woodward?
Somebody get me Bob Woodward.
There have been drafts out there.
We know that the report contained a variety of options for upping the ante on this ISIS fight.
And one of those options was increasing troop deployments.
On the ISIS fight?
That's how they...
Oh, wait.
Are we talking ISIS or Afghanistan?
Or both ISIS and Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This 30-day report was specifically about prosecuting the fight against the Islamic State.
So...
So it included Afghanistan, but it was focused on Syria?
I guess I thought there was a whole other report that was about Afghanistan.
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing.
I'm sorry.
My fault.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Apologies if there was any misunderstanding there.
No.
I see.
So I get it.
There's already the Islamic State report, which...
But that one probably said, here we need a few hundred in Afghanistan.
You're saying it's possibly, but nobody knows that for sure yet.
But then as far as a report about what all to do about Afghanistan, that's a separate issue, which you haven't reported on yet, is what you're saying.
That's...
It's a separate issue.
I do know that people like General Votel, who you mentioned, have advocated sending additional troops into Afghanistan.
And I do know that there's going to be some political pushback on that, if that is a formal proposal that's brought forward.
So at this point, Afghanistan is more like a never-ending war than anything else that we're fighting right now.
And I don't know if they've yet proposed something kind of revolutionary and transformational that will be kind of a one-and-done solution for Afghanistan.
I don't know if it exists.
Yeah.
Or, well, or if they think it does is a separate question.
But yeah.
So, I mean, I guess politically, they're probably going to not want to do the entire search thing like they did, you know, 2010.
But they need, apparently, at least reinforcements to keep the whole thing from falling apart.
And it doesn't look like they're going to be shy about asking for that.
That's right.
I mean, they want to...
Again, this is all under the umbrella of backing up the troops who are on the ground.
And that's sort of the distinction that the U.S. has used to say, we're not actually fighting this war.
They're doing it in Iraq.
They're doing it in Syria.
They're doing it in Afghanistan.
Saying, we're not sending ground troops in to fight on their own, but we will send elements in here and there to basically back up and advise and assist the local forces that are waging this fight.
So, I mean, you can argue, is that a meaningful distinction?
You know, how much are you helping and how much are you participating?
But that's the distinction that they're drawing.
And how many Afghan forces you really got in that National Army anyway, too?
Oh, man, I wish I had that number right in front of me.
I don't.
I will say, though, the Afghan National Army, it's got six different sort of corps or headquarters units spread throughout the country.
And they fight hard and they take a lot of casualties.
And I was actually, I was just having a conversation with the Afghan ambassador to the U.S. about this, saying, you know, some people cite the casualties as a bad thing, you know, a reason to point out that we're doing a bad job.
But in fact, it signals our commitment to this fight and the fact that we really do want to win and we're going to put our money where our mouth is.
So they have a lot of troops.
We're sending them not only advisors, but of course, things like aircraft and training them on how to fly them.
They're a nascent army.
You know, obviously they don't have as much experience as more established countries, but, you know, I do want to give them their due because they're fighting for their homeland.
And it seems to me that they're working very hard at that.
Well, I hope I didn't speak too soon about, you know, the question of whether they're going to have another surge or not.
Are there any rumors that maybe they'll have a serious escalation there again and try to beat the Taliban once and for all, this kind of thing?
I'll tell you this.
I would be surprised, but it wouldn't be the first time this year or in the last 12 months that I've been very, very surprised by the turns that, you know, political and defense things have taken.
I mean, because one thing that's not really discussed is the fact, I mean, here and there it is.
It must be discussed at this level, these guys making these decisions, is that the Taliban are doing as well as they've done in many years.
You know, maybe since they were rousted from power, they basically have a shadow government that rules virtually all of Pashtunistan, except, you know, maybe in Kandahar City and Lashkar Gah and a couple of exceptions.
But otherwise, they already won, kind of thing.
They don't rule Kabul in the north and they haven't run the Americans out.
They don't have that much power, but they seem to control their own territory anyway.
And so it seems like if they want to change that, they're going to need all the Marines, not a few hundred here or there.
I think it's safe to say that U.S. military leadership are very cognizant of the fact that they don't want to send in thousands and thousands of troops again in another surge only to pull out and see a resurgent Taliban.
You know, we've heard that song before.
I think they're going to be very resistant to something that seems just like a reiteration of what we've done in the past.
That's good to hear.
In other words, you're saying the officers, the generals in the Marines and the Army, they don't want to go back at this point.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think you talk to any seasoned ground general and they know exactly what it costs to send troops overseas to fight and to put them in harm's way.
And they're not going to pay that cost lightly.
So you talk, you know, sometimes the language coming from the White House is somewhat aggressive.
You know, you hear Donald, President Donald Trump talking about obliterating ISIS or, you know, somehow changing the game in the Middle East.
But right now, the most seasoned defense leaders at the Pentagon are veteran ground officers who know this stuff backwards and forwards.
And you know, I know that their advice is not going to be to to send people in just for a temporary fix.
Well, I'm glad to hear you say that.
I mean, it seems like I guess the counter, my counter assumption would be that, well, Mattis helped rewrite the counterinsurgency manual with with Petraeus and based at least on mythological success under McMaster and Tal Afar.
And then McMaster was part of the seat as part of the surge in Afghanistan that Mattis was later the head of CENTCOM overseeing the Afghan war.
And Dunford was the former commander of the Afghan war.
So it seems like they have a lot at stake if if leaving or at least, you know, not escalating but leaving it the status quo is going to mean this much or even greater future success for the Taliban that they have to basically accept that as their failure.
Right.
And their other option, of course, is always escalate as long as the war is still going on.
They can't really run us off.
We have we have more military power than them when it comes down to it.
We could stay forever if we wanted to.
And if that and if the other option is admitting defeat, seems like they might.
I don't know.
You're right.
You raise very good points.
I mean, all of these officers, these leaders have a real a real vital stake in Afghanistan because they were there and they set the course.
And that could be a good thing, right, that they've that they've learned lessons and they're moving in a direction headed for success.
Or it could mean that, you know, that that failure is simply too costly.
You know, as a reporter, I don't I don't know if I can speak to their thought processes, but I think the points you raise are valid.
Yeah.
Well, you do good reporting and I really appreciate your time on the show to discuss it with us.
Well, thank you so much for having me on.
I enjoy talking about it.
All right.
This next one is from Hope Hodge SEC.
She writes for Military Dotcom.
This one is called U.S. Marines move into Syria with howitzers.
I know I'm kind of preoccupied with Afghanistan issues right now.
Thanks you guys for listening to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Go to Scott Horton or to Libertarian Institute dot org and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
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