They made their way to 72 percent of the nations on this planet, Nick Turse reports. And criminal misconduct followed.
President Donald J. Trump on Oct. 27, 2019; announcing details of the U.S. Special Operations Forces mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound in Syria. (White House, Shealah Craighead)
Last October, a group of eight Apache attack and CH-47 Chinook helicopters carrying U.S. commandos roared out of an airfield in Iraq. They raced through Turkish airspace and across the Syrian border, coming in low as they approached a village just north of Idlib Province where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his bodyguards, and some of his children were spending the night.
The helicopters opened up with their machine guns, while military jets circled above and 50 to 70 members of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force stormed into a compound just outside the village of Barisha. When it was all over, Baghdadi’s home was rubble, an unknown number of people living in the area, including civilians, had been killed, and he and two of his children were dead — victims of a suicide vest worn by the ISIS chief.
That commando raid in Syria was the highest profile U.S. Special Operations mission of 2019, but it was just one of countless efforts conducted by America’s most elite troops. They also fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq while carrying out missions, conducting training exercises, or advising and assisting local forces from Bulgaria to Romania, Burkina Faso to Somalia, Chile to Guatemala, the Philippines to South Korea.
Last year, members of the Special Operations forces — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Marine Raiders among them — operated in 141 countries, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). In other words, they deployed to roughly 72 percent of the nations on this planet. While down from a 2017 high of 149 countries, this still represents a 135 percent rise from the late 2000s when America’s commandos were reportedly operating in only 60 nations.
As General Richard Clarke, chief of Special Operations Command, told members of the House Appropriations Committee last year:
“Our worldwide access and placement, our networks and partnerships, and our flexible global posture enable the Department [of Defense]… to respond across the spectrum of competition, especially below the threshold of armed conflict where our competitors — particularly Russia and China — continue to hone their skills and advance their strategic objectives.”
This near-record level of global deployment came as questions swirled about mounting malfeasance by some of America’s most elite troops and was accompanied by handwringing from leaders at Special Operations Command over possible ethical failings and criminal behavior among their troops. “Recent incidents have called our culture and ethics into question and threaten the trust placed in us,” Clarke wrote in an August 2019 memo. Those “incidents,” ranging from drug use to rape to murder, have spanned the globe from Afghanistan to Colombia to Mali, drawing additional attention to what actually happens in the shadows where America’s commandos operate.
U.S. Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, at left, while touring 352nd Special Operations Wing at RAF Mildenhall, England, Sept. 12, 2019. (U.S. Air Force, Joseph Barron)
Special Operations Forces Deployed to 82 Countries Weekly
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has leaned ever more heavily on its most elite troops. While U.S. Special Operations forces (USSOF or SOF) make up just 3 percent of American military personnel, they have absorbed more than 40 percent of the casualties of these years, mainly in America’s conflicts across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa.
During this period, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has grown in every way imaginable — from its budget and size to the pace and the geographic sweep of its missions. For example, “Special Operations-specific funding,” which stood at $3.1 billion in 2001, has, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw, increased to approximately $13 billion today.
There were roughly 45,000 SOF personnel in 2001. Today, about 73,000 members of Special Operations Command — military personnel and civilians — are carrying out a broad range of activities that include counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, security force assistance, and unconventional warfare. In 2001, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed overseas in any given week. That number now stands at 6,700, says SOCOM’s Ken McGraw.
According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by Special Operations Command, more than 62 percent of those special operators deployed overseas in 2019 were sent to the Greater Middle East, far outpacing any other region of the world. This represented a rebound for special operators in the Central Command, or CENTCOM, area of operations. While more than 80 percent of America’s commandos deployed overseas at the beginning of the decade were stationed there, that number had dropped to just over 50 percent by 2017 before beginning to rise again.
The remainder of America’s forward-deployed special operators were scattered across the globe with just over 14 percent active in Africa, more than 10 percent in Europe, 8.5 percent in the Indo-Pacific region, and 3.75 percent in South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. During any given week, commandos are deployed in about 82 nations.
Traditionally, America’s elite forces have placed a heavy emphasis on “security cooperation” and “building partner capacity;” that is, the training, advising, and assisting of indigenous troops. In testimony to members of Congress last April, for instance, SOCOM commander General Richard Clarke asserted that, “for developing countries, security cooperation activities are key tools for strengthening relationships and attracting new partners while enabling them to tackle threats and challenges of common concern.”
Common concerns are not, however, always of the utmost importance to the United States. In that same testimony, Clarke made special mention of so-called 127e (“127-echo”) programs, named for the budgetary authority that allows U.S. Special Operations forces to use certain local troops as proxies in counterterrorism missions, especially those directed at “high-value targets.”
“It allows,” said Clarke, “small-footprint USSOF elements to take advantage of the skills and unique attributes of indigenous regular and irregular forces — local area knowledge, ethnicity, and language skills — to achieve effects that are critical to our mission objectives while mitigating risk to U.S. forces. This is especially true in remote or politically sensitive areas where larger U.S. formations are infeasible and/or the enemy leverages safe havens that are otherwise inaccessible to USSOF.”
Used extensively across Africa and the Middle East, 127e programs can be run either by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secretive organization that controls the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, the Army’s Delta Force, and other special mission units, or by more generic “theater special operations forces.” In Africa, these programs typically involve small numbers of U.S. special operators working with 80 to 120 specially trained and equipped indigenous personnel. “The use of 127e authority has directly resulted in the capture or killing of thousands of terrorists,” Clarke claimed.
President Barack Obama and his national security team monitor the Special Operations raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. (White House, Pete Souza)
So-called direct action missions have led to the deaths of Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden, and countless other supposedly high-value targets, but some experts question the utility of these many attacks. Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who served 10 tours in Afghanistan, including as the combined joint special operations component commander there, as well as the chief of Special Operations Command Africa from 2015 to 2017, is one of them. Now running for the Senate in New Hampshire, he is critical of what he sees as an obsessive focus on killing one leader after another while not putting in the hard work of training local forces to achieve actual security and stability without U.S. technology and assistance. “You just can’t kill your way to victory,” Bolduc told TomDispatch.
Commando Crimes
In addition to questions about the efficacy of their tactics and strategy, Special Operations forces have recently been plagued by scandal and reports of criminal activity. “After several incidents of misconduct and unethical behavior threatened public trust and caused leaders to question Special Operations forces culture and ethics, USSOCOM initiated a Comprehensive Review,” reads the executive summary of a January report on the subject. But that review is itself a bit of a puzzle.
SOCOM commanders have repeatedly called out wrongdoing by America’s elite forces. In November 2018, then-SOCOM chief General Raymond Thomas co-authored an ethics memorandum for his troops. A month later, he also sent an email to them in which he wrote: “A survey of allegations of serious misconduct across our formations over the last year indicates that USSOCOM faces a deeper challenge of a disordered view of the team and the individual in our SOF culture.”
In February 2019, SOCOM underwent an ethics review followed by a 90-day “focus period on ethics.” Not long after, Thomas’s successor also decried moral turpitude within the command. “In the recent past, members of our SOF units have been accused of violating that trust and failing to meet our high standards of ethical conduct this command demands,” SOCOM commander General Richard Clarke told members of the House Appropriations Committee in April 2019. “We understand that criminal misconduct erodes the very trust that enables our success.” Clarke, in fact, inherited self-assessments of SOCOM components ordered by Thomas and used them as the basis for that Comprehensive Review issued in January.
“This is a very detailed review that takes a hard look at ourselves,” Clarke wrote in a letter to the SOF community released with the report. But despite employing a 12-person advisory team and an 18-person review team, despite their “55 engagements” and canvassing of more than “2,000 personnel across the SOF enterprise,” there’s no evidence of the review being “detailed” or the look all that “hard.” In fact, the 69-page report fails to offer even an inkling of what “misconduct and unethical behavior” it was examining.
In 2019 alone, however, many examples came to light that could have been included in just such a review. For instance, a Marine Raider, Staff Sgt. Kevin Maxwell, Jr., pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in military prison for his role in the killing of Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar, an Army Green Beret, in Mali in 2017. Navy SEAL Adam Matthews was also sentenced to a year’s confinement and a bad conduct discharge after pleading guilty to conspiracy, unlawful entry, hazing, obstruction of justice, and assault with battery, among other charges, in the attack on Melgar by fellow special operators. (It was meant to be a sexual assault, but led to the Green Beret’s strangulation and death.) Another Navy SEAL and a Marine Raider accused in Melgar’s death both face life in prison.
Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar was among the seven fallen soldiers honored by the memorial stone laying ceremony, May 22, 2018 at Fort Bragg N.C. (U.S. Army)
Last July, reports emerged that not only had members of SEAL Team 10 been caught using cocaine, but that commandos had long been cheating on urinalysis screenings. That same month, an entire platoon of Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 7 was removed from Iraq following reports of serious misconduct, including the rape of a female service member attached to the unit. Meanwhile, there have been rumors about even more serious misbehavior involving another SEAL Team 7 detachment in Yemen. In September 2019, three senior leaders of SEAL Team 7 were fired for failures in leadership that led to a breakdown of good order and discipline.
That same month, a complaint filed with the Department of Defense inspector general accused Naval Special Warfare commander Rear Admiral Collin Green of “duplicitous actions” that were “done in an attempt to bolster his own reputation and protect his own career.” A month later, four members of the Naval Special Warfare Command were arrested in Okinawa on various charges related to unruly behavior.
Marine Corps (USMC) members practice military operations and urban terrain (MOUT) warfare at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, Japan. (USMC, Antonio Vega)
Accounts of rampant drug use among SEALs also emerged in the court martial of SEAL Edward Gallagher who, in a circus-like case, was acquitted of charges that he had killed noncombatants in Iraq, but convicted of posing for photographs with the corpse of a teenager he was accused of murdering. (After Navy officials sought to discipline Gallagher, potentially stripping him of the Trident pin that signifies membership in the SEALs, President Donald Trump intervened to reverse the decision.)
And all of this followed a string of black eyes for elite troops in recent years, including allegations of massacres, unjustified killings, murder, prisoner abuse, child rape, child sexual abuse, mutilations, and other crimes, as well as drug trafficking and the theft of government property by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Air Force special operators, and Marine Raiders.
Despite this startling record of malfeasance, SOCOM’s Comprehensive Review came to an unstartling conclusion. The review team (whose members were almost exclusively connected to the Special Operations community) largely absolved the command and its commandos of responsibility for much of anything. The team claimed that special operators had only been involved in “several” incidents of misconduct and unethical behavior instead of a laundry list of criminality. The review appeared to conclude that, instead of criminal activity, Special Operations Command’s greatest failing was actually its insistence on not failing — what it termed (11 times in 69 pages) a culture focused on “mission accomplishment.” And the report ultimately concluded that SOCOM did not have a “systemic ethics problem.”
With thousands of commandos operating — with little visibility — in scores of countries on any given day, it’s little wonder that discipline has eroded to a point where the command could neither fully gloss over nor cover it up. “I am forming an implementation team that will follow through on these findings and recommendations, assess results, and refine our policies accordingly,” Clarke announced following the release of the Comprehensive Review.
But can an organization producing a report that avoids outside oversight, reads like a whitewash, and won’t even name all the countries it operates in be counted on to be honest with the American people? Special Operations Command still has an opportunity to, as their report promises, “ensure transparent accountability.” If they’re serious about such outside oversight, they should feel free to contact me.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch. He is the author of “Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan” and the award-winning “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.”
This article is from TomDispatch.com.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Little understood is how thoroughly militarism permeates the whole of US society.
Militarism has hit US streets as the police forces are granted much the same immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit upon citizens in US as is granted to our military men in conflict areas, war zones.
If one chose to open eyes, one could find enough available evidence as to pose the question; Was ever a slave treated as cavalierly by police in our old racist South as today our police are to all citizens”.
Police call us civilians, which is a term once only used to stand for non active duty military, long gone from their minds is the thought that they, Police, are Civil Servants; hense civilians.
Men in military face tribunals of only military career officers for crimes, crimes of not following the rules of their military commanders, bringing disrespect to uniform, and today our Police Departments have the very same procedures.
Which has led to the Uniform as being of a higher order than that of the lives and future of civilians.
Loyalty is not to the ideals as expressed by those of early years of founding, but to their codes of Conduct, as is the oath or creed of todays soldier to as they state, as Warriors.
No longer do we have citizen soldiers, who served in both peace and wars, who once a war or time of service ended went home to civilian lives; a today it is war itself and their fellow warriors they swear allegiance to and when not on active duty are held up to public as heros, even though 99% never once protected by force of arms the American public nor its Constitution.
So what is the highest honor an American can hold and be defined as?
Why of course none but our Uniformed Warriors.
Centuries now in the building against those early fears of what at time of founding was deemed greatest enemy to US freedom and Liberty, and is today an example not to just just US Liberty, but that of all worlds people.
The blame for crimes against humanity cannot be laid solely at US soldiers feet, for they have over 300 millions of supporters who are culpable in their crimes.
To those 300 millions should we bow and say, “Thank You”?
this is the war that never ends. it goes on and on my friends, some people started fighting this war on a lie. and now people fight this war just because…..
this is the war that never ends. it goes on and on my friends, some people started fighting this war on a lie. and now people fight this war just because…..
this is the war that never ends. it goes on and on my friends, some people started fighting this war on a lie. and now people fight this war just because…..
The only way to end the wars is to starve the war machine.
CUT MILITARY SPENDING!!!
The more money they have, the more wars they will have. if they ain’t in wars, they antagonize and CREATE wars just so they can continue to have perpetual wars.
Even in light of this massive pandemic, the military psychopaths will figure out a way to maintain their continued growing funding.
if you go to any high school in urban areas, they will have jr rotc military staff on campus teaching rotc classes along side regular teachers. this has a chilling effect. any staff or student who speaks up against the military or gov’t is “frowned” upon. the military staff create an atmosphere throughout the school which promotes “patriotism”, military, etc. they know that most teachers won’t say anything bad about them so the students think the military and patriotism is a good and noble thing. having military personnel on high schools reminds me of the old political commissars of russia.
wiki: political commissars (also politruk Russian: ???????? from ???????????? ????????????: political officer) is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education (ideology) and organization, and committed to the civilian control of the military.
they have already brainwashed most working poor students to see the us military as the “good guys”. for most of the working poor students, the military staff and school staff ENCOURAGE them to go into the military. they see it as a job. they are nothing more an extension of military recruiting operations.
i think a lot of folks would be shocked at the reality of how insidious the war machine has infiltrated the youths of america. don’t even get me started on the dozens of computer games that, let’s be frank, train kids to be soldiers with soldier simulation games.
everytime i hear someone boast with entitlement, “I served in the military” i cringe.
they were suckered into joining for benefits and use patriotism as a way to further their life in society trying to gain respectability.
these wars have no connection to defense of our nation. these wars have been based on lies.
the only thing separating them from being catagorized as the mass murderers they are is they wear a uniform. At least fifty percent of them know what they are doing, and less than one percent of those come out and speak the truth, (albeit sometime later).
“War Is A Racket.”
-Major General Smedley Butler
“Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to BR1NG IT PEACE, SECURITY and FREED0M, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and HUMAN1TAR1AN purposes. That is a LlE; and it is an ancient LlE, yet Generations still rise and Believe it.”
— Henry David Thoreau
‘Special Operations Command,” seems to be a synonym for gathering people together who like to rape, pillage and murder—and with no accountability. Would someone remind me again why Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are treated so horribly and why this “Special Ops ,” group have a free pass for seemingly any inhuman activity?
Word.
Is it just me or has everyone else noticed all of a sudden a appeared plethora of Navy Seals turning up on “motivational” speaking circuit with books and podcasts glorifying military as good and noble. They put forth this notion that anyone who doesn’t appreciate their “service” are worse than dirt.
Least we forget wasn’t it a Navy Seal Edward Gallagher who did all those heinous things?
When these monsters murder for a living and lie to themselves that they are doing good…..all other lies to themselves and public are easy to tell.
What is overlooked or glossed over by duh’ public is military murders people for a living! It’s how you breed psychopaths
True heroes are firefighters. They actually HELP people.
Indeed.
But we have many other “overlooked” heroes.
For example, a woman struggling alone to raise her children well.
By the way, I’ve never thought of the military as real heroes, at least most of them. They are paid killers.
Anyone else notice the rise of military personalities like numerous navy seals and such on social media that are putting a positive spin on the military? They are using soft power of doling out “self improvement” advice to gain following (especially amongst the impressionable youth who know nothing) and have people look up to them and their profession. People are so easily manipulated in our society.
“War Is A Racket.”
-Major General Smedley Butler
“Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to BR1NG IT PEACE, SECURITY and FREED0M, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and HUMAN1TAR1AN purposes. That is a LlE; and it is an ancient LlE, yet Generations still rise and Believe it.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during
that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a
gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico
safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I
helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International
Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the
Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped
make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China
in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best
he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on
three continents.”
-Major General Smedley Butler
This is what happens when resources are misused by leadership. As the missions grow beyond the original leadership concepts , resource materials , including the troops, are diminished. The leadership rewarded for mission accomplishments, under pressure to “do more” become competitive and the system falls victim to “turf building” as leaders compete to climb the organizational ladder.
The leadership get credit for doing more with less, get promoted and standards fall.
Discipline breaks down as the lack of attention to detail falters, too many deployments, incomplete mission detail, and slack time boredom starts to poison the environs of the participants. as “burn out” settles in.
All aspects suffer as mission focus is lost by leadership, troops down time drops asresponsibilities grow outside of their training and moral bottoms out.
These individuals are supposed to be the elite of the elite and as their numbers grow and quality drops. Much the result I suppose of leadership focusing more on their careers than mission. It has happened constantly in the military services. as never ending wars stress the war machine.
SOCOM best hope they don’t have a systemic ethics problem because the problem they already have is eating them alive. As recruitment drops and the military looks more and more to contractors the problems will fester and grow as profits for contractors become their leaderships number one priority.
Pretty much a shit story all around, to say nothing of the affect on those who joined in order to serve honorably.
To those who serve I can only say hang in there and maybe just maybe new leadership will have come to it’s senses.
To the American public all I can say is remember this. These COMBAT veterans cannot forget their experiences and they cannot unlearn what has been pounded into their heads. If you really support the troops show leadership yourselves and bring them home.
Thanks to all at CN
As good as Mr. Turse is, the thing missing from this report is the damage done to all those countries in which we operate.
It’s just like local police force policing themselves. It’s just not going to happen.
Except for the rare exception that’s held up as an example to obfuscate reality…
Excellent piece by Nick Turse – I wish that everybody could read and consider it carefully. We are not the good guys. One of many myths of American greatness and exceptionalism.
I am currently reading “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. The book tells the story of the brutal and murderous march westward in carrying out Manifest Destiny, essentially a genocide of those already living here when “discovered” by the European invaders.
In the historical accounts of the genocide of those times she offers that we / US government and its military has carried those methods all over the world to the present day. I strongly agree.
Wake up and smell the blood of our fellow human beings at the hands of our government policies carried out by our military – we are paying for these actions $$$$. We are directly complicit. Ignorance is not an excuse.
Think long and hard about what is done in our names around the planet each day by brutal US policy.
“US Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries”
“”And criminal misconduct followed. “
Words are catalysts of connotations as are edits, framing and register.
One connotation of the above edit is that criminal misconduct followed the deployment thereby obfuscating the possibility that deployment itself may have been criminal misconduct.
The above edit and framing also assigns sole agency to “US Commandos” – the subjects – and obfuscates those upon whom “criminal misconduct” was perpetrated – the objects.
The remaining “article” continues to illustrate resort to similar edits, framing and register.
This is a useful illustration of the culture in the petri dish self-described as “The United States of America” affording opportunities to others unrecognised as having agency.
“US Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries”
Here is a true pandemic, a deadly one, and not one that will be over in a few weeks or months.
“Here is a true pandemic”
Perhaps not.
Perhaps the distribution facilitates social confinement and contingent reduction in infection levels?
perpetual wars = gov’t welfare program for the military industrial complex
The first link in this article by Nick Turse leads back to Time magazine where in the very first paragraph it is claimed that OBL was found during the Obama Presidency – the thing is that the capture of OBL has never been verified with evidence- no pictures nada zilch nothing – the body was quickly disposed of at sea – many have suggested that OBL was long dead anyway – the claims of his capture was a propaganda.
I’d like to see the A to Z list of those 141 countries – many a claim and reference has been made to the US being in so many countries no one has ever published the actual list.
Even on the Authors website only a map with dots is shown – not a list with verifiable details such as the names of the countries where the US military is active.
I’ve started making my own list yet fail to reach the target of 141 – Perhaps US embassies ought to be included?
My understanding is that the US has approximately 900 military bases / installations spanning the entire planet. It’s not a stretch then to say that there are commandos in 141-places. Personally, I have zero trust in anything coming out of Washington and the generals of our military.
America’s Corporatists are hoarders of wealth and greed, addicted to foreign oil, drunk on power and wading knee deep in the blood of others.
Whenever I investigate US involvement in a region (SE Asia, S/C America, or the Mideast), my wish that the US had secret good intentions is proven false.
A superpower could intend the best for a foreign population, and get mired in a swamp. But secret wars always prove to be driven by tribal demagogues who invented threats to get bribes. There has never been a history of development aid in those areas, and the US has always attacked democracy and supported thugs.
We attacked in Korea and Vietnam because US politicians foolishly tried to force anti-colonial revolutionaries to do everything our way, regardless of their generations of struggle against colonial exploitation. If we had a better plan, they would have discovered that within two generations anyway: the wars were idiotic bumbling.
We attacked in Central and South America because the rich who bribe US politicians fear socialism in the US, and invented threats in poor countries that needed social democracy. We had no better plan, only the tyranny of the rich who bribe US politicians.
We attacked in the Mideast to get zionist bribes to Truman and others, creating the instability we pretended to oppose. The Iraq war was planned and implemented by zionists.
We caused the problems in Central Asia: Afghanistan would have been far better off without the US creating Al Qaeda to attack the USSR, to get campaign bribes from the rich.
There was no good intention, no careful thinking, and no possible good result of any of these conflicts. These were the sales campaigns of stupid gangsters in US politics. The US will have no decent foreign policy until democracy is restored, until we force the rich gangsters out of politics forever.