The Trump administration has ceased disclosing to the public when U.S. troops are deployed on the ground in Iraq and Syria, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Obama administration made a practice of announcing all conventional force deployments, letting the public know when it was sending U.S. service members into harm’s way. But Trump, who campaigned on promises to rely on “the element of surprise” in warfare, has in his two months in office already dispatched hundreds of Marines and paratroopers to active war zones in the Middle East without informing the public or Congress.
Pentagon officials confirmed the change in policy, saying it was important to “maintain tactical surprise.” But former government officials say the move violates the public’s “right to know.”
“It’s truly shocking that the current administration furtively deploys troops without public debate or describing their larger strategy,” said Ned Price, National Security Council spokesman under President Obama.
Lawrence Korb, a former assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan currently working at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, agreed.
“If you’re sending Americans in harm’s way over there, people need to know what the overarching goal is,” he said. “It’s important to have a public debate. Congress must have a role in deciding what happens next, otherwise this is a slippery slope.”
Congress has not voted to authorize any military action in Syria. Instead, the Pentagon is relying on the more than decade-old Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have interpreted that authorization as imposing no end date and no geographical limits for the so-called “war on terror.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis, however, says he wants Congress to vote on a new AUMF to authorize military action against ISIS. He told a congressional committee in March that he “does not understood why the Congress hasn’t come forward with this, at least to debate.”
Trumpy probably doesn`t want the papers to let people know how many troops are killed .
He is not a king. Congress can defund these activities. All of his departures from the norms of this country can be curtailed if the other equal branches of government do their job. So long as our Congress sees coddling this monster as in their best interest, we will have to deal with him. The story isn’t one elected official in the Executive branch, but many complicit elected officials in the other branches of government.
Remember the nostalgic debates of the 1960’s when we debated the danger of undeclared wars waged with the public’s full knowledge of who was fighting where? Now we are having undeclared wars waged out of the public eye. What’s next… the President wages personally directed secret drone strikes on competing hotels in foreign lands? Slippery slope indeed.
There have been some announcements, prior to this week…
“JUDY WOODRUFF: United States military involvement in Syria has deepened since President Trump took office. The Pentagon has authorized the deployment of 400 more troops, some of whom are already there. Five hundred special operations forces sent by the Obama administration are also on the ground. War planners reportedly are seeking to send an additional 1,000 American troops to Syria.”
I recall recently seeing an article detailing the authorization of 1,000 more troops to Syria and also reading an article about sending more forces to Iraq. The actual numbers on the ground have been growing, but seems to have gotten lost in the storm of controversies since Inauguration Day.
So secretive, so corrupt. This entire Admin needs to go . Keep up the pressure, keep investigations going!