When Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler died Thursday in combat in Iraq, the Obama administration took great pains to prove the U.S. was not involved in combat in Iraq.
One of the key features of President Obama’s approach toward the Islamic State is his insistence that U.S. forces would not be involved in ground combat, except for occasional special operations raids. This has popularly been known as the “no boots on the ground” policy even though U.S. advisers are in fact on the ground in Iraq.
The 39-year-old special operations soldier from Roland, Oklahoma, was on one such raid. Though officials insist his death, the first combat casualty in Iraq since U.S. combat troops were withdrawn at the end of 2011, does not signify a change in that policy, Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Friday said more such raids would be conducted and more casualties could be expected.
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“It doesn’t represent us assuming a combat role. It represents a continuation of our advise-and-assist mission,” Carter told reporters at the Pentagon, adding that U.S. forces “will be in harm’s way. There’s no question about it and I don’t want anybody to be under any illusions about this.”
He also said U.S. aircraft also would more aggressively go after the Islamic State’s ability to sell oil, after a successful attack Wednesday on a production facility and a cash collection station in eastern Syria.
While stopping short of saying the U.S. was taking on a combat role, Carter used careful language to show that things were changing.
“The additional support I’ve mentioned today does not represent a change in our strategy, but it does represent a change in our approach to achieving it. I’m determined that we continue to adapt to get results,” he said.
Carter said Wheeler was killed when he and another U.S. soldier came to the aid of the Kurdish peshmerga forces they were advising during the storming of an Islamic State compound in Hawija, in northern Iraq, to free 70 prisoners whom he said were set to be executed later that day. U.S. forces also provided helicopters to carry the Kurdish and U.S. commandos and transport the freed prisoners.
He said Wheeler’s actions weren’t part of the plan.
“Everything I know about this incident was that as the compound was being stormed, the plan was not for the U.S. advise and assist and accompanying forces to enter the compound or be involved in the fire fight,” Carter said.
“All the indications are it was his actions and that of one of his teammates that protected those who were breaching the compound and made the mission successful,” he said of Wheeler. “I’m immensely proud of this young man.”
Since ordering military action against the Islamic State last year, President Obama has always left the door open to raids such as the one on the Iraqi prison. In his public statement, the president has been careful to rule out only “sustained” ground combat operations, without defining any specific limits.
The White House announced in May that Obama had ordered a similar operation in Syria that killed Abu Sayyaf, a senior Islamic State leader. But in that case, there were no U.S. casualties.
Wheeler’s death, however, forced U.S. officials to more directly define the limits of “no boots on the ground.” Before Carter’s direct confirmation Friday, Pentagon officials were dodging the idea that Wheeler had died in combat for fear of signaling a policy shift.
“It is important to realize that U.S. military support to this Iraqi rescue operation is part of our overarching counter-terrorism efforts throughout the region and does not represent a change in our policy. U.S. forces are not in Iraq on a combat mission and do not have boots on the ground,” Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of U.S. troops fighting the Islamic State, said earlier in the day.
Besides freeing the 70 hostages, Carter said the troops gathered valuable intelligence on ISIS as a result of the raid.
“This is the stuff you get and the great value, by the way, of raids of this kind. And I expect that we’ll do more of this kind of thing,” Carter said.
“But one of the reasons for that is that you learn a great deal, because you collect the documentation, you collect various electronic equipment and so forth, on top of which we now have 70 individuals who spent a lot of time there, and who were, in turn, captured by ISIL in different ways, and thereby had different perspectives.”When we find opportunities to do things that will effectively prosecute the campaign, we’re going to do that,” Carter said. “And this is an example of a case where we could do something we alone had the capability to do, and I’m absolutely prepared to do that. So raids is one of those categories. And I suspect that we’ll have further opportunities in the future, and we would want to avail ourselves of them.”
