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Donald Trump’s First Year Set a Record for Use of Special Operations Forces
Elite commandos deployed to 149 countries in 2017.
We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,”
said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces in the West African nation of Niger.
That's because Trump kept these missions secret. It got out that in Trump's first year, he got a lot of these elite commandos killed. Then later called them suckers and losers.
This record-setting number of deployments comes as American commandos are battling a plethora of terror groups in quasi-wars that stretch from Africa and the Middle East to Asia.
“Most Americans would be amazed to learn that US Special Operations Forces have been deployed to three quarters of the nations on the planet,” “There is little or no transparency as to what they are doing in these countries and whether their efforts are promoting security or provoking further tension and conflict.”
those forces conducted five times as many lethal counter terrorism missions in such non-battlefield countries in the Trump administration’s first six months in office as they did during Obama’s final six months.
Special Operations forces have, in fact, played a key role in the war effort in Syria, too. While American commandos have been killed in battle there, Kurdish and Arab proxies—known as the
Syrian Democratic Forces—have done the lion’s share of the fighting and dying
This year, 2017 US special operators were killed in
Iraq,
Syria,
Afghanistan,
Yemen,
Somalia, and the Sahelian nations of
Niger and
Mali
Somalia, Libya, and those in the Sahel—are just a handful of the nations to which American commandos were deployed in 2017.
Yet the number of deployments still grew to a record 149 nations in 2017.
What you are seeing is Trump upped the number of high risk missions and a lot of good men died. I mean suckers and losers. We just never heard about it. Why? Because Democrats didn't BenGhazi him you tool.
This desire to expand Special Operations further comes at a moment when senators like Lindsey Graham continue to acknowledge how remarkably clueless they are about where those elite forces are deployed and what exactly they are doing in far-flung corners of the globe.
“Almost by definition, the dizzying number of deployments undertaken by US Special Operations forces in recent years would be hard to track. But few in Congress seem to be even making the effort,”
Elite commandos deployed to 149 countries in 2017.
www.thenation.com