Phil Walter has served in the military, the intelligence community, and the inter-agency. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not contain information of an official nature. His website is www.philwalter1058.com.
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Competitors of the United States can be understood to be engaging in “Below Established Threshold Activities” (BETA) as an adaptive response to US nuclear and conventional deterrence.
Recent attacks have demonstrated the need for a new lexicon on describing violent extremists.
Securing Mosul and Ar-Raqqah will be a victory against ISIL as a regional threat within Iraq and Syria. But it remains to be seen how this will impact the global violent extremist ideology called the Islamic State.
Despite the Administrations insistence that US troops are not engaged in a combat mission against ISIL, recent deaths of US service members in Iraq and Syria illustrate the incongruence of the stated policy, legal underpinnings, and facts on the ground.
The Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) requires the Executive Branch to conduct detailed strategic planning prior to spending money. The laws that govern the President when he introduces the men and women of the United States (U.S.) Armed Forces into hostilities, specifically Article II of the Constitution, the War Powers Resolution, and the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force for both Iraq and Afghanistan, have no similar strategic planning requirement. Congress should fix this disparity to demonstrate that it cares as much about how the men and women of our Armed Forces