{"id":14283,"date":"2016-04-26T04:22:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T04:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14283"},"modified":"2016-04-26T04:22:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T04:22:51","slug":"syria-fight-to-get-some-u-s-ground-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14283","title":{"rendered":"Syria fight to get some U.S. ground help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/mccain.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14285\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/mccain-300x169.png\" alt=\"mccain\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/mccain-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/mccain.png 645w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have great respect and admiration for U.S. Sen. John McCain.<\/p>\n<p>The Arizona Republican, though, needs to stop insisting that it&#8217;s time to put\u00a0more American\u00a0&#8220;boots on the ground&#8221; in places where they don&#8217;t belong.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama has ordered 250 U.S. Special Forces to Syria to &#8220;assist and advise&#8221; frontline troops who are battling the Islamic State.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/277529-mccain-250-more-us-troops-in-syria-insufficient\">http:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/277529-mccain-250-more-us-troops-in-syria-insufficient<\/a><\/p>\n<p>McCain&#8217;s reaction was quite predictable. He called the deployment a &#8220;welcome&#8221; development but then said it is &#8220;insufficient&#8221; and is doomed to fail.<\/p>\n<p>I happen to disagree with the failure prediction.<\/p>\n<p>Having said that, I am troubled by the way the president has described the troops&#8217; assignment. He said they aren&#8217;t going to be &#8220;combat&#8221; troops. I am forced to say, merely, &#8220;Huh?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The troops will comprise mostly Army Special Forces &#8230; Green Berets and Rangers. These folks are trained to the hilt to, um, <em>fight.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I strongly suspect that if, in the process of <em>advising<\/em> and <em>assisting<\/em> the Syrians, that these special operations troops find themselves engaging ISIL terrorists that they&#8217;ll know what to do.<\/p>\n<p>The soldiers who are joining the fight against ISIL are going to deliver maximum damage to the terror organization.<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, Sen. McCain should reel back his desire to send thousands more ground forces back into battle.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the president of the United States ought to quit soft-pedaling the <em>threat<\/em> of combat that awaits these forces.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have great respect and admiration for U.S. Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican, though, needs to stop insisting that it&#8217;s time to put\u00a0more American\u00a0&#8220;boots on the ground&#8221; in places where they don&#8217;t belong. President Obama has ordered 250 U.S. Special Forces to Syria to &#8220;assist and advise&#8221; frontline troops who are battling the Islamic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14283\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Syria fight to get some U.S. ground help<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,13,14],"tags":[465,540,2002,2347,2362,2546,5052],"class_list":["post-14283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-military-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-army-rangers","tag-barack-obama","tag-green-berets","tag-isil","tag-islamic-state","tag-john-mccain","tag-us-special-forces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14286,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions\/14286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}