New Administration May Take Special Operators Back to Roots
February 2017
By Stew Magnuson
U.S. Special Forces soldiers perform drills in Kabul province, Afghanistan
Barack Obama chose MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, to deliver one of his final speeches of his presidency to address his record on counterterrorism.
The home base for both Central Command and Special Operations Command played a key role during the eight years his administration fought the forces of radical Islam.
He gave credit to special forces for beating back the Islamic State in its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“We took the fight to ISIL in both Iraq and Syria, not with American battalions but with local forces backed by our equipment and our advisors and, importantly, our Special Forces,” he said.
Special operations forces over the past two administrations have been used mostly as “door kickers” — commandos charged with targeted capturing or killing of so-called high-value targets.
While that is an important part of what special operators do, experts interviewed said the elite forces may find themselves under the Trump administration returning to their roots as advisors and trainers for foreign forces.
The Obama administration relied heavily on special operations forces with a “small footprint” approach to tackling terrorism, said Linda Robinson, senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corp., and author of the book, “One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare.”
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