WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Obama administration’s decision to reverse its previous strategy and send elite ground forces back to the Middle East will be warmly welcomed by leaders of the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik.
"This is a gift to Daesh," Freeman stated on Monday.
Freeman was responding to a statement on Friday by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter that elements of the US Army’s 101st Airborne division would be redeployed in Iraq to support the regular Iraqi army to recapture Mosul and destroy Daesh core base.
But Freeman argued the proposed new US strategy would disastrously backfire.
"The so-called Islamic State has been trying to entice American troops back onto its home ground," he noted.
Far from protecting the US homeland against terrorism, the return of US ground troops to Iraq would endanger it further by motivating supporters of the Islamic State to step up retaliatory attacks within the United States whenever they could, Freeman pointed out.
"[Daesh] will settle for retaliating in the United States as an interim measure, if it must," the veteran Middle East expert explained.
The more US forces were directly engaged in combat operations against Muslim movements of any kind in the Middle East, the more Daesh and other extremist groups would seize on these activities as pretexts to carry out atrocities against American civilians within their own country, Freeman argued.
"As [former US Congressman] Ron Paul observed, ‘They're over here because we're over there.’ The more we're over there, the more we're going to see of them here," he concluded.
Chas Freeman is a lifetime director of the Atlantic Council and served as US Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’affaires at the US embassies in Beijing and Bangkok. Freeman also held several senior level positions at the US Department of Defense.
