The White House stressed on Monday that the U.S. special operations troops sent to Syria were not there to participate in raids and engage in combat.
In talking about last week’s announcement that additional U.S. troops would be deployed, Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, pushed back against questions that have been raised for weeks about how a U.S. service member died in a firefight when the administration continues to state that the U.S. is not in combat.
“They’re not going to be out fighting side-by-side with forces inside Syria,” Rhodes said at the Defense One Summit. “They’re intended to be a force multiplier that will allow for those on the front lines of the fight against ISIL … to hopefully have better results in the fight to take back territory.”
The president announced last week that he was sending 50 spec ops troops to Syria to aid local ground forces in the fight to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIL.
Rhodes acknowledged that the special operators are in dangerous areas, but said they would stay “some space back” from combat and provide advice for ground forces.
“They’re not going to be out on raids, that’s not their mission,” he said.
Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler died in a firefight while accompanying Kurdish soldiers during a raid last month to free 70 Iraqi hostages. He was the first U.S. combat death in the fight against the Islamic State.
Rhodes said that raids like that could happen in the future, but that it was the “exception to the rule,” not the norm.
“They’re in dangerous places … but their mission is not one of combat,” he said.
It was the latest in a string of pronouncements by the administration and the Pentagon that seem to say that while Syria is a combat zone, U.S. troops who are there are not in combat.
The most forceful statement came last week from the spokesman for the coalition fight against the Islamic State, known as Operation Inherent Resolve.
“Of course this is a combat zone. There’s a war going on in Iraq in case people haven’t noticed,” Col. Steve Warren said. “We’re here and it’s all around us. This is a dangerous place.”
“There are thousands of Americans in harm’s way right now,” he said.
