The ground troops that United States has not sent into Iraq to fight ISIL are reportedly in Iraq fighting ISIL.
BloombergBusinessweek (“U.S. Soldiers Fight Islamic State in Iraq, Kurds Advance“):
U.S. soldiers clashed with Islamic State militants, helping the Iraqi army repel attacks against the town of al-Baghdadi in the western Anbar province, Al Jazeera TV reported, as Kurdish forces advanced in the north.
The U.S. troops were from al-Assad military base, the biggest in Anbar, First Lieutenant Muneer al-Qoud from the Iraqi police said by phone. Meanwhile, a U.S. senior military official said there are no U.S. ground troops fighting in Iraq, though forces can engage in self-defense if required.
The clashes may mark the first time U.S. ground forces have engaged Islamic State militants since President Barack Obama authorized air strikes against the al-Qaeda breakaway group in August. A ground conflict would signal a policy shift for Obama, who made pulling the U.S. out of Iraq the centerpiece of his first presidential campaign and oversaw the withdrawal of combat forces from the country in 2011.
The senior military official said the U.S. mission in Iraq is to prepare and support the country in fighting Islamic State forces, and no engagement with militant forces was being tracked.
From the beginning, it’s been obvious that the goals of defeating ISIL and not sending in ground troops are mutually contradictory. Given that President Obama is a pretty smart guy and is surrounded by experts in military affairs, the obvious takeaway is that our goal is something short of defeating ISIL, namely containment. But the fact of the matter is that, while the U.S. soldiers on the ground aren’t “ground troops” in the sense of infantry forces sent there with the mission of actively closing with and destroying an enemy force, there presence makes their getting into the occasional firefight inevitable.
I’m therefore inclined to believe the Al Jazeera report. The question becomes how isolated this event will be.
