Inevitably, There Will Be More Troops on the Ground
“Hash Tags Aren't Going to Win this War.”
Score one for the good guys. On March 25, the Pentagon announced a big win in the fight against ISIS: the killing of ISIS finance minister Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, largely considered the second-in-command of the terrorist organization.
It was part of a top secret and highly dangerous “kill or capture” raid by U.S. special operations forces.
No stranger to covert military missions, former Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill discussed the impact of al-Qaduli’s death with FOX News anchor Charles Payne.
Highlights of their exchange:
Payne: “It looks like this was done with some sort of air raid, but you say ultimately we’re going to have to put troops on the ground to finish the job.”
O’Neill: “Everyone from the Secretary of Defense to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs…they’re saying we’re inevitably going to put more troops on the ground. They’re going to start to put them in Iraq where shouldn’t have left in the first place regardless of why got there. We’ve got Marines in there. The Marines are supporting a lot of the Iraqi forces who want to take Mosul back. We’ve got our special operators that just conducted this raid. They did it in a way where they had two choices: they’re either going to surrender to the overpowering Americans or they’re going to go meet Allah. They died knowing they didn’t have a chance.”
Payne: “While we celebrate the death of the number two guy there, it’s a revolving door. There’ll be another number two and another number one. There are so many people who are pushing back against what you’re saying. They’re saying…it’s an ideology. There’s no real head to this thing. It would be a waste of manpower, treasured lives and money.”
O’Neill: “It’s not a waste of manpower…but we need to think outside the box. It can’t be go into Raqqa, take it down like we took down Saddam’s army and then try to rebuild. Go in there, thump ‘em like they deserve it. Get rid of it and then turn it over to someone else. People that say we don’t want to fight them now…fine, their grandchildren will be saying, man I sure wish grampa had manned up and fought these guys.”
Payne: “You talk about when we do leave. How do we gain the confidence of the folks there, because with President Obama having retreated ‘responsibly’ they don’t trust us. They don’t want to put any more skin in the game.”
O’Neill: “That’s the 1,400 year old question… We’re not going to be able to solve their problem with a bunch of our Western stuff, but we can thump ‘em back into reality and hopefully start a dialog where they can live in peace with each other.”
Payne: “In the meantime reports add up to 1,400 ISIS fighters have been unleashed in Europe. What do we do about all the embedded terrorists who’ve already been sent to Western countries, have their orders and are ready to kill.”
O’Neill: “We need to do better policing. There needs to be criminal profiling. They’re learning it the hard way right now. They’re blowing people up when they try to travel American airlines. They’re blowing people up at the metro. This is going to keep happening. We’re already in a long fight…a 100-year war. We need to be smart about being stupid. We need to start doing things right.”
Payne: “As these targets become softer and softer you’d think that resolve and urgency in the West would become greater as well.”
O’Neill: “You’d think so, but all you see is a bunch of monuments lit up with a country’s colors and then we all say ‘we are Paris, we are Brussels’ and that’s it. Hashtags aren’t going to win this war.”