{"id":85233,"date":"2017-01-09T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=85233"},"modified":"2017-01-06T14:46:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T14:46:48","slug":"year-of-the-commando-u-s-special-ops-forces-deploy-to-138-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/01\/year-of-the-commando-u-s-special-ops-forces-deploy-to-138-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Year of the Commando: U.S. Special Ops Forces Deploy to 138 Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year ahead will offer clues as to whether Obama\u2019s long war in the shadows will survive.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Scott Poteet, Draken Internationals director of business development for U.S. Air Force Programs, speaks to the media at the intersection of North Las Vegas Boulevard and North Hollywood Boulevard after an aircraft crash near the area on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016, in Las Vegas. An official says a veteran pilot had just completed an exercise with a military weapons school at an Air Force base near Las Vegas when he ejected as the plane went down. (Erik Verduzco\/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)(Credit: AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

6 Jan 2017 – <\/em>They could be found on the outskirts of Sirte,\u00a0Libya<\/a>, supporting local militia fighters, and in Mukalla,\u00a0Yemen<\/a>, backing troops from the United Arab Emirates. At Saakow, a remote outpost in southern\u00a0Somalia<\/a>, they assisted local commandos in killing several members of the terror group al-Shabab. Around the cities of Jarabulus and Al-Rai in northern\u00a0Syria<\/a>, they partnered with both Turkish soldiers and Syrian militias, while also embedding with Kurdish YPG fighters\u00a0and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Across the border in\u00a0Iraq<\/a>, still others joined the fight to liberate the city of Mosul. And in\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>, they assisted indigenous forces in various missions, just as they have every year since 2001.<\/p>\n

For America, 2016 may have been the year of the\u00a0commando<\/a>. In one conflict zone after another across the northern tier of Africa and the Greater Middle East, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) waged their particular brand of low-profile warfare. \u201cWinning the current fight, including against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other areas where SOF is engaged in conflict and instability, is an immediate challenge,\u201d the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM),\u00a0General Raymond Thomas<\/a>,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Senate Armed Services Committee last year.<\/p>\n

SOCOM\u2019s shadow wars against terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIL) may, ironically, be its most visible operations. Shrouded in even more secrecy are its activities \u2014 from counterinsurgency and counter-drug efforts to seemingly endless training and advising missions \u2014 outside acknowledged conflict zones across the globe. These are conducted with little fanfare, press coverage or oversight in scores of nations every single day. From Albania to Uruguay, Algeria to Uzbekistan, America\u2019s most elite forces \u2014 Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets among them \u2014 were deployed to 138 countries in 2016, according to figures supplied to\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0by U.S. Special Operations Command. This total, one of the highest of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, typifies what has become the golden age of, in SOF-speak, the \u201cgray zone\u201d \u2014 a phrase used to describe the murky twilight between war and peace. The coming year is likely to signal whether this era ends with Obama or continues under President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn just the past few years, we have witnessed a varied and evolving threat environment consisting of: the emergence of a militarily expansionist China; an increasingly unpredictable North Korea; a revanchist Russia threatening our interests in both Europe and Asia; and an Iran which continues to expand its influence across the Middle East, fueling the Sunni-Shia conflict,\u201d General Thomas wrote last month in\u00a0PRISM, the official journal of the Pentagon\u2019s Center for Complex Operations. \u201cNonstate actors further confuse this landscape by employing terrorist, criminal and insurgent networks that erode governance in all but the strongest states \u2026 Special operations forces provide asymmetric capability and responses to these challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, according to data provided to\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0<\/em>by SOCOM, the United States deployed special operators to China (specifically Hong Kong),\u00a0<\/strong>in addition to eleven countries surrounding it \u2014 Taiwan (which China considers a\u00a0breakaway province<\/a>), Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Laos, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan. Special Operations Command does not acknowledge sending commandos into Iran, North Korea or Russia, but it does deploy troops to many nations that ring them.<\/p>\n

SOCOM is willing to name only 129 of the 138 countries its forces deployed to in 2016. \u201cAlmost all Special Operations forces deployments are classified,\u201d spokesman Ken McGraw told\u00a0TomDispatch. \u201cIf a deployment to a specific country has not been declassified, we do not release information about the deployment.\u201d<\/p>\n

SOCOM does not, for instance, acknowledge sending troops to the war zones of\u00a0Somalia<\/a>,\u00a0Syria<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Yemen<\/a>, despite overwhelming evidence of a U.S. special ops presence in all three countries, as well as a White House report, issued last month, that\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe United States is currently using military force in\u201d Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and specifically states that \u201cU.S. special operations forces have deployed to Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Special Operations Command, 55.29 percent of special operators deployed overseas in 2016 were sent to the Greater Middle East, a drop of 35 percent since 2006. Over the same span, deployments to Africa\u00a0skyrocketed<\/a>\u00a0by more than 1600 percent \u2014 from just 1 percent of special operators dispatched outside the\u00a0United States\u00a0in 2006 to 17.26 percent last year. Those two regions were followed by areas served by European Command (12.67 percent), Pacific Command (9.19 percent), Southern Command (4.89 percent) and Northern Command (0.69 percent), which is in charge of \u201chomeland defense.\u201d On any given day, around 8,000 of Thomas\u2019s commandos can be found in more than 90 countries worldwide.<\/p>\n

The Manhunters<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSpecial Operations forces are playing a critical role in gathering intelligence \u2014 intelligence that\u2019s supporting operations against ISIL and helping to combat the flow of foreign fighters to and from Syria and Iraq,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Lisa Monaco<\/a>, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in remarks at the International Special Operations Forces Convention last year. Such intelligence operations are \u201cconducted in direct support of special operations missions,\u201d SOCOM\u2019s Thomas\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0in 2016. \u201cThe preponderance of special operations intelligence assets are dedicated to locating individuals, illuminating enemy networks, understanding environments and supporting partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Signals intelligence from computers and cellphones supplied by foreign allies or\u00a0intercepted<\/a>\u00a0by surveillance drones and manned aircraft, as well as human intelligence provided by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been integral to targeting individuals for kill\/capture missions by SOCOM\u2019s most elite forces. The highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), for example, carries out such counterterrorism operations, including\u00a0drone strikes<\/a>,\u00a0raids<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0assassinations<\/a>\u00a0in places like Iraq and Libya. Last year, before he exchanged command of JSOC for that of its parent, SOCOM, General Thomas\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that members of Joint Special Operations Command were operating in \u201call the countries where ISIL currently resides.\u201d (This may\u00a0indicate<\/a>\u00a0a special ops deployment to\u00a0Pakistan<\/a>, another country absent from SOCOM\u2019s 2016 list.)<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]e have put our Joint Special Operations Command in the lead of countering ISIL\u2019s external operations. And we have already achieved very significant results both in reducing the flow of foreign fighters and removing ISIL leaders from the battlefield,\u201d Defense Secretary Ash Carter\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0in a relatively rare official mention of JSOC\u2019s operations at an October press conference.<\/p>\n

A month earlier, he\u00a0offered<\/a>\u00a0even more detail in a statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee:<\/p>\n

\u201dWe\u2019re systematically eliminating ISIL\u2019s leadership: The coalition has taken out seven members of the ISIL Senior Shura \u2026 We also removed key ISIL leaders in both Libya and Afghanistan \u2026 And we\u2019ve removed from the battlefield more than 20 of ISIL\u2019s external operators and plotters \u2026 We have entrusted this aspect of our campaign to one of [the Department of Defense\u2019s] most lethal, capable and experienced commands, our Joint Special Operations Command, which helped deliver justice not only to Osama Bin Laden, but also to the man who founded the organization that became ISIL, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for details on exactly how many ISIL \u201cexternal operators\u201d were targeted and how many were \u201cremoved\u201d from the battlefield by JSOC in 2016, SOCOM\u2019s Ken McGraw replied: \u201cWe do not and will not have anything for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he was commander of JSOC in 2015, General Thomas spoke of his and his unit\u2019s \u201cfrustrations\u201d with limitations placed on them. \u201cI\u2019m told \u2018no\u2019 more than \u2018go\u2019 on a magnitude of about ten to one on almost a daily basis,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>. Last November, however, The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the Obama administration was granting a JSOC task force \u201cexpanded power to track, plan and potentially launch attacks on terrorist cells around the globe.\u201d That Counter-External Operations Task Force (also known as \u201cEx-Ops\u201d) has been \u201cdesigned to take JSOC\u2019s targeting model \u2026 and export it globally to go after terrorist networks plotting attacks against the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

SOCOM disputes portions of the\u00a0Post\u00a0story. \u201cNeither SOCOM nor any of its subordinate elements have \u2026 been given any expanded powers (authorities),\u201d SOCOM\u2019s Ken McGraw told\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0by email. \u201cAny potential operation must still be approved by the GCC [Geographic Combatant Command]\u00a0<\/strong>commander [and], if required, approved by the Secretary of Defense or [the president].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cU.S. officials\u201d (who spoke only on the condition that they be identified in that vague way) explained that SOCOM\u2019s response was a matter of perspective. Its powers weren\u2019t recently expanded as much as institutionalized and put \u201cin writing,\u201d\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0was told. \u201cFrankly, the decision made months ago was to codify current practice, not create something new.\u201d Special Operations Command refused to confirm this but Colonel Thomas Davis, another SOCOM spokesman, noted: \u201cNowhere did we say that there was no codification.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Ex-Ops, General Thomas is a \u201cdecision-maker when it comes to going after threats under the task force\u2019s purview,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to The\u00a0Washington Post\u2019s Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe. \u201cThe task force would essentially turn Thomas into the leading authority when it comes to sending Special Operations units after threats.\u201d Others\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0Thomas has only expanded influence, allowing him to directly recommend a plan of action, such as striking a target, to the Secretary of Defense, allowing for shortened approval time. (SOCOM\u2019s McGraw says that Thomas \u201cwill not be commanding forces or be the decision maker for SOF operating in any GCC\u2019s [area of operations].\u201d)<\/p>\n

Last November, Defense Secretary Carter offered an indication of the frequency of offensive operations following a visit to Florida\u2019s Hurlburt Field, the\u00a0headquarters<\/a>\u00a0of Air Force Special Operations Command. He\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201ctoday we were looking at a number of the Special Operations forces\u2019 assault capabilities. This is a kind of capability that we use nearly every day somewhere in the world \u2026 And it\u2019s particularly relevant to the counter-ISIL campaign that we\u2019re conducting today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, alone,\u00a0Special Operations forces<\/a>\u00a0conducted 350 raids targeting al-Qaeda and Islamic State operatives last year, averaging about one per day, and capturing or killing nearly 50 \u201cleaders\u201d as well as 200 \u201cmembers\u201d of the terror groups,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in that country. Some sources also\u00a0suggest<\/a>\u00a0that while JSOC and CIA drones flew roughly the same number of missions in 2016, the military launched more than 20,000 strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, compared to less than a dozen by the Agency. This may reflect an Obama administration decision to implement a\u00a0long-considered plan<\/a>\u00a0to put JSOC in charge of lethal operations and shift the CIA back to its traditional intelligence duties.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

World of Warcraft<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c[I]t is important to understand why SOF has risen from footnote and supporting player to main effort, because its use also highlights why the United States\u00a0continues to have difficulty in its most recent campaigns \u2014 Afghanistan, Iraq, against ISIS and AQ and its affiliates, Libya, Yemen, etc. and in the undeclared campaigns in the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine \u2014 none of which fits the U.S. model for traditional war,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0retired Lieutenant General Charles Cleveland, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command from 2012 to 2015 and now a senior mentor to the chief of staff of the Army\u2019s Strategic Studies Group. Asserting that, amid the larger problems of these conflicts, the ability of America\u2019s elite forces to conduct kill\/capture missions and train local allies has proven especially useful, he added, \u201cSOF is at its best when its indigenous and direct-action capabilities work in support of each other. Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq and ongoing CT [counterterrrorism] efforts elsewhere, SOF continues to work with partner nations in counterinsurgency and counter-drug efforts in Asia, Latin America and Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

SOCOM acknowledges deployments to approximately 70 percent of the world\u2019s nations, including all but three Central and South American countries (Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela being the exceptions). Its operatives also blanket Asia, while conducting missions in about 60 percent of the countries in Africa. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A SOF overseas deployment can be as small as one special operator participating in a language immersion program or a three-person team conducting a \u201csurvey\u201d for the U.S. embassy. It may also have nothing to do with a host nation\u2019s government or military. Most Special Operations forces, however, work with local partners, conducting training exercises and engaging in what the military calls \u201cbuilding partner capacity\u201d (BPC) and \u201csecurity cooperation\u201d (SC). Often, this means America\u2019s most elite troops are sent to countries with security forces that are regularly\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0for human rights abuses by the U.S. State Department. Last year in Africa, where Special Operations forces\u00a0utilize<\/a>\u00a0nearly 20 different programs and activities \u2014 from training exercises to security cooperation engagements \u2014 these included\u00a0Burkina Faso<\/a>,\u00a0Burundi<\/a>,\u00a0Cameroon<\/a>,\u00a0Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a>,\u00a0Djibouti<\/a>,\u00a0Kenya<\/a>,\u00a0Mali<\/a>,\u00a0Mauritania<\/a>,\u00a0Niger<\/a>,\u00a0Nigeria<\/a>,\u00a0Tanzania<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Uganda<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n

In 2014, for example, more than 4,800 elite troops took part in just one type of such activities \u2014\u00a0Joint Combined Exchange Training<\/a>\u00a0(JCET) missions \u2014 around the world. At a cost of more than $56 million, Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and other special operators carried out 176 individual JCETs in 87 countries. A 2013 RAND Corporation study of the areas covered by Africa Command, Pacific Command and Southern Command found \u201cmoderately low\u201d effectiveness for JCETs in all three regions. A 2014 RAND\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. security cooperation, which also examined the implications of \u201clow-footprint Special Operations forces efforts,\u201d found that there \u201cwas no statistically significant correlation between SC and change in countries\u2019 fragility in Africa or the Middle East.\u201d And in a 2015 report for Joint Special Operations University, Harry Yarger, a senior fellow at the school,\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cBPC has in the past consumed vast resources for little return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite these results and larger strategic failures in\u00a0Iraq<\/a>,\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Libya<\/a>, the Obama years have been the golden age of the gray zone. The 138 nations visited by U.S. special operators in 2016, for example, represent a jump of 130 percent since the waning days of the Bush administration. Although they also represent a 6-percent\u00a0<\/strong>drop compared to last year\u2019s total, 2016 remains in the upper range of the Obama years, which saw deployments to\u00a075<\/a>\u00a0nations in 2010,\u00a0120<\/a>\u00a0in 2011,\u00a0134<\/a>\u00a0in 2013 and\u00a0133<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, before peaking at\u00a0147<\/a>\u00a0countries in 2015. Asked about the reason for the modest decline, SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw replied, \u201cWe provide SOF to meet the geographic combatant commands\u2019 requirements for support to their theater security cooperation plans. Apparently, there were nine fewer countries [where] the GCCs had a requirement for SOF to deploy to in [Fiscal Year 20]16.\u201d<\/p>\n

The increase in deployments between 2009 and 2016 \u2014 from about 60 countries to more than double that \u2014 mirrors a similar rise in SOCOM\u2019s total personnel (from approximately 56,000 to about 70,000) and in its baseline budget (from $9 billion to $11 billion). It\u2019s no secret that the tempo of operations has also increased dramatically, although the command refused to address questions from\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0on the subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cSOF have shouldered a heavy burden in carrying out these missions, suffering a high number of casualties over the last eight years and maintaining a high operational tempo (OPTEMPO) that has increasingly strained special operators and their families,\u201d\u00a0reads<\/a>\u00a0an October 2016 report released by the Virginia-based think tank CNA. (That report emerged from a conference\u00a0attended<\/a>\u00a0by six former special operations commanders, a former assistant secretary of defense and dozens of active-duty special operators.)<\/p>\n

The American Age of the Commando<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last month, before the Senate Armed Services Committee,\u00a0Shawn Brimley<\/a>, former director for strategic planning on the National Security Council staff and now an executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security,\u00a0echoed<\/a>\u00a0the worried conclusions of the CNA report. At a hearing on \u201cemerging U.S. defense challenges and worldwide threats,\u201d Brimley said \u201cSOF have been deployed at unprecedented rates, placing immense strain on the force\u201d and called on the Trump administration to \u201ccraft a more sustainable long-term counterterrorism strategy.\u201d In a paper\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in December,\u00a0Kristen Hajduk<\/a>, a former adviser for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called for a decrease in the deployment rates for Special Operations forces.<\/p>\n

While Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. military as a whole is \u201cdepleted<\/a>\u201d and has\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0for increasing the size of the Army and Marines, he has offered no indication about whether he plans to support a further increase in the size of special ops forces. And while he did recently\u00a0nominate<\/a>\u00a0a former\u00a0Navy SEAL<\/a>\u00a0to serve as his secretary of the interior, Trump has offered few indications of how he might employ special operators who are currently serving.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDrone strikes,\u201d he\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0in one of his rare detailed references to special ops missions, \u201cwill remain part of our strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed information to dismantle their organizations.\u201d More recently, at a North Carolina victory rally, Trump made specific references to the elite troops soon to be under his command. \u201cOur Special Forces at Fort Bragg have been the tip of the spear in fighting terrorism. The motto of our Army Special Forces is \u2018to free the oppressed,\u2019 and that is exactly what they have been doing and will continue to do. At this very moment, soldiers from Fort Bragg are deployed in 90 countries around the world,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the crowd.<\/p>\n

After seeming to signal his support for continued wide-ranging, free-the-oppressed special ops missions, Trump appeared to change course, adding, \u201cWe don\u2019t want to have a depleted military because we\u2019re all over the place fighting in areas that just we shouldn\u2019t be fighting in \u2026 This destructive cycle of intervention and chaos must finally, folks, come to an end.\u201d At the same time, however, he pledged that the United States would soon \u201cdefeat the forces of terrorism.\u201d To that end, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a former director of intelligence for\u00a0JSOC<\/a>\u00a0whom the president-elect tapped to serve as his national security adviser, has promised that the new administration would reassess the military\u2019s powers to battle the Islamic State \u2014 potentially providing more latitude in battlefield decision-making. To this end, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that the Pentagon is crafting proposals to reduce \u201cWhite House oversight of operational decisions\u201d while \u201cmoving some tactical authority back to the Pentagon.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last month, President Obama traveled to Florida\u2019s MacDill Air Force Base, the home of Special Operations Command, to deliver his capstone counterterrorism speech. \u201cFor eight years that I\u2019ve been in office, there has not been a day when a terrorist organization or some radicalized individual was not plotting to kill Americans,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0a crowd\u00a0packed<\/a>\u00a0with troops. At the same time, there likely wasn\u2019t a day when the most elite forces under his command were not deployed in 60 or more countries around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will become the first president of the United States to serve two full terms during a time of war,\u201d Obama added. \u201cDemocracies should not operate in a state of permanently authorized war. That\u2019s not good for our military, it\u2019s not good for our democracy.\u201d The results of his permanent-war presidency have, in fact, been dismal,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Special Operations Command. Of eight conflicts waged during the Obama years, according to a 2015 briefing slide from the command\u2019s intelligence directorate, America\u2019s record stands at zero wins, two losses and six ties.<\/p>\n

The Obama era has indeed proven to be the \u201cage of the commando<\/a>.\u201d However, as Special Operations forces have kept up a frenetic operational tempo, waging war in and out of acknowledged conflict zones, training local allies, advising indigenous proxies, kicking down doors and carrying out assassinations, terror movements have\u00a0spread<\/a>\u00a0across the\u00a0Greater Middle East<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President-elect Donald Trump\u00a0appears<\/a>\u00a0poised to\u00a0obliterate<\/a>\u00a0much of the\u00a0Obama legacy<\/a>, from the president\u2019s\u00a0signature healthcare law<\/a>\u00a0to his\u00a0environmental regulations<\/a>, not to mention changing course when it comes to foreign policy, including in relations with\u00a0China<\/a>,\u00a0Iran<\/a>,\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Russia<\/a>. Whether he will heed advice to decrease Obama-level SOF deployment rates remains to be seen. The year ahead will, however, offer clues as to whether Obama\u2019s long war in the shadows, the golden age of the gray zone, survives.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute.\u00a0 An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the<\/em>\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>,\u00a0the\u00a0Nation<\/a>,\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0TomDispatch.<\/a>\u00a0He is the author\/editor of several books, including the\u00a0newly published <\/em>Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, War and Survival in South Sudan.<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 salon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year ahead will offer clues as to whether Obama\u2019s long war in the shadows will survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}