Tag: American military

U.S. Resumes Large-Scale Operations Against ISIS in Northern Syria

New York Times logoAfter a lull of several weeks, American troops and Syrian Kurdish fighters are once again conducting large-scale counterterrorism missions.

MANAMA, Bahrain — United States troops have resumed large-scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria, military officials say, nearly two months after President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troopsopened the way for a bloody Turkish cross-border offensive.

The new operations show that despite Mr. Trump’s earlier demand for a complete withdrawal of all American forces from Syria, the president still has some 500 troops in the country, many of them in combat, for the foreseeable future.

“Over the next days and weeks, the pace will pick back up against remnants of ISIS,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of the military’s Central Command, told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain on Saturday.

View the complete November 25 article by Eric Schmitt on The New York Times website here.

Military Service Members and U.S. National Security Will Pay the Price for Trump’s Manufactured Emergency

Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

After causing the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history in a failed attempt to obtain nearly $6 billion in border wall funding, President Donald Trump now plans to defy the will of Congress by illegally siphoning billions of dollars from the nation’s defense budget. On February 15, Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to sidestep Congress and invoke unique executive authority. But during the announcement, Trump himself admitted that his decision was motivated more by convenience than necessity, outing the emergency declaration for what it really is: a rogue attempt to actualize an unfulfilled campaign promise.

Trump’s proposed border wall—which his own chief of staff referred to as “absurd and almost childish”—offers an ineffective solution to a nonexistent crisis. Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have decreased by nearly 75 percent since 2000, and those entering the United States are primarily children and families fleeing violence and seeking asylum. Despite Trump’s attempts to provoke fear about broader security concerns, his administration has found “no credible evidence” of terrorist groups entering the United States via the southern border. Moreover, U.S. law enforcement reports that only a small fraction of illegal drug seizures occur where the border wall would be constructed, as the vast majority of drugs enter the United States through ports of entry. The statute that the White House has cited in an attempt to co-opt billions in defense appropriations for this so-called national emergency requires funds be used in support of the military during a national emergency. In the absence of a legitimate crisis, however, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has asked border officials to justify the reallocation of funds. Continue reading “Military Service Members and U.S. National Security Will Pay the Price for Trump’s Manufactured Emergency”