Military Sees Broader Role for Special Operations Forces, in Peace and War

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/world/military-plans-broader-role-for-special-operations.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:04 AM
Subject: re: Military Sees Broader Role for Special Operations Forces, in Peace and War
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Our history of using special forces outside of declared warzones goes back way before Iraq and Afghanistan. When president Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961, he found that "we" had plans for an invasion of Cuba well advanced and soldiers already in Vietnam. We didn't yet call them "special forces; in the language of the day they were "military advisers".  In each case, what Ike had started as a low-budget exploratory sideshow exploded into a bloody debacle with the change of administrations.  

   No doubt there are other examples that remain classified. But what we know of the history argues strongly that these peacetime deployments of Special Forces lead us not toward stability but into war.

Barry Haskell Levine