On December 19, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that there are roughly 2,000 troops stationed in Syria—1,100 more than previously shared with the public. Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder disclosed the new number almost off-handedly, without explanation for the shock news as Syria experiences a generational moment following former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapse on December 8. The announcement personifies the ongoing and widespread disdain of American political and military leaders for transparency on military operations abroad.
Indeed, the laxness with which Ryder announced the new deployment numbers is unacceptable. These forces are not, as the spokesperson claimed, simply “temporary rotational forces” but reflect the worst excesses of mission creep that have come to define U.S. military operations in the post-9/11 era. Ryder’s follow-on statements, in the same breath as his claims of the temporary nature of the deployment, highlight this bleak reality: “Right now, there are no plans to cease the defeat-ISIS mission.”
Rather, the Biden administration feels empowered to expand that mission and lie to the American people about what exactly it is doing in Syria. Such an outcome results from unchecked executive power in the U.S. government and Congressional reluctance to question support for anything labeled as counterterrorism (CT) operations. Worse, the announcement comes as news surfaces that U.S. President Joe Biden experienced “good days and bad days” as early as 2021 concerning his mental acuity—another inconvenient fact hidden from U.S. citizens, raising questions regarding who has actually been steering policy in the White House.
The inconvenient truth for Biden’s advisors is simple: U.S. forces continue to operate in a country that has not invited them to establish a presence and without any constitutionally mandated Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) required to make such military operations legal under U.S. law. Only Congress can pass an AUMF—the president cannot unilaterally declare one. Flimsy arguments connecting the Islamic State to Al-Qaeda – arguing that the former grew out of the latter—are another ugly expansion of unchecked executive power aimed at limiting U.S. citizen input on the critical decisions of their elected officials.
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