The State Department’s top spokesman insisted Monday that the Obama administration has never promised a “no boots on the ground” strategy in Syria, even though President Obama himself has made the “no boots” promise several times over the last few years.
“There was never this ‘no boots on the ground,'” spokesman John Kirby said Monday. “I don’t know where this keeps coming from.”
Surprised reporters noted that numerous senior officials, and even Obama himself, have said over and over that there would be “no boots” in Syria. Last year, USA Today put together a list of the 16 times Obama made the “no boots” pledge.
Kirby was pressed on the issue just hours after the Obama administration announced that 250 more special operations troops to Syria, in addition to the 50 that were sent in October.
Reporters said the 300 total troops seems to violate Obama’s pledge. But Kirby said anyone who thinks the Obama administration is breaking its pledge doesn’t fully understand what Obama and others meant when they said “boots on the ground.”
Specifically, Kirby said the administration has always meant “boots” to mean large-scale forces.
“We’re not going to be involved in a large-scale combat mission on the ground,” he said. “That is what the president has long said.”
Obama has often short-handed it to say simply that there would be, as he said in 2013, a “no boots-on-the-ground approach.”
“We would not put boots on the ground,” he said in August 2013. In 2014, Obama added that “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian.”
When reporters told Kirby that the administration’s mantra has been “no boots on the ground” for months, Kirby said, “That is not true. It’s just not true.”
But to clarify further, Kirby said the administration’s take on “boots on the ground” is a very precise definition.
“When we talk about boots on the ground, in the context that you have heard people in the administration speak to, we’re talking about conventional, large-scale ground troops that are designed to actually engage in, plan, coordinate, integrate and engage in combat operations on the ground as units,” he said.
“We’re not doing that, we’ve never done that in Iraq or in Syria, and we’re not going to do it now,” Kirby added.
“There is a big difference between saying ‘no boots on ground’ — we’ve all recognized from almost the outset we’ve had U.S. troops in Iraq, which are very much on the ground — and the colloquial meaning of the term … which is large scale ground troops, intentionally combat ground troops engaged in combat operations that they themselves are conducting independently, and integrating and coordinating that way,” he added.
“And that’s not happening, and that’s not gonna happen,” he said.
When asked if the Obama administration can send any number of special operations troops to Syria without violating its “no boots” pledge, Kirby dodged.
“They are not ground troops in the sense that they are not conventional ground troops conducting combat operations on their own,” he said. “There’s a big difference.”
And when asked why the Obama administration didn’t say “no large-scale troops” instead of “no boots on the ground,” Kirby dodged again.
“On this point, I totally agree with you. They’re wearing boots, and they are on the ground,” he said. “That doesn’t mean [it’s a] large-scale ground combat.”
