White House: Ground Combat Troops In Syria Are Not Off The Table

The new Republican position on President Obama’s strategy to destroy ISIS is that without actually pushing for ground troops in Iraq and Syria, we should not be taking ground troops off the table. The media is so invested in reporting that political conflict that they’ve completely missed the huge news that Major Garrett shook loose from the White House on Thursday. While the White House has steadily been signaling as much, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest made it plain, at yesterday’s briefing, that American combat troops on the ground, in Syria and Iraq, have never really been off the table:

MAJOR GARRETT: Just to follow up, one last one on Juliet’s question about Special Operations. Is that a permanent declaration — the President will not introduce Special Operations forces either into Iraq or Syria? Or just this particular recommendation was rejected and others can be proffered in the future?

MR. EARNEST: Well, Major, you know that it has been publicly reported that earlier this summer there was an operation in Syria —

MAJOR GARRETT: Sure, yes. We already know that. I’m talking about going forward.

MR. EARNEST: Well, I think what that is an indication of is that the line the President is drawing is about a sustained combat operation — a ground war, if you will — in Iraq and Syria. The President will not allow the United States to be dragged back into a ground war. And that is why the President is not contemplating deploying additional combat troops on the ground in either Iraq or Syria.

MAJOR GARRETT: But he remains open to mission-specific applications — Special Operations forces if the need arises?

MR. EARNEST: I’m not willing to broadly take anything — to broadly take anything off the table.

MAJOR GARRETT: So he’s open to it.

MR. EARNEST: The President, I think, has been really clear about what his intentions are, and ruling out the kind of ground war in Iraq and Syria that involves American personnel that the President does not believe would be in the interest of our national security.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention already knows that the President, and his administration, have steadily been defining upward the definition of where we won’t go regarding troop levels, but what Earnest is saying here, explicitly, is that U.S. ground troops (which is what Special Operators are) in Syria are not off the table, and never have been. In fact, according to the President’s latest declaration on the subject, the only thing that is off the table is “sending in 100,000 American troops.”

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By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.