28 April 2015

Special Forces: What U.S. Gets Wrong

By Meaghan Keeler-Pettigrew and Stuart Bradin
April 22, 2015

Meaghan Keeler-Pettigrew is the chief operating officer and Stuart Bradin is the president of the Global Special Operations Forces Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to advance the capability and efficacy of special operations forces. The views expressed are their own.

(CNN)The United States is failing its partners. If you want to understand one of the reasons that terrorism has been allowed to spread, it is that the majority of our partners do not have credible and capable special operations forces to respond to and defeat the current threat — and we’re not doing nearly enough to address the problem.

The trouble is that little of our foreign military financing — including the recent Counterterrorism Partnership Funds — goes toward this vital facet in our efforts to counter extremism. As a result, violent extremists are making troubling gains.

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