WASHINGTON: The Pentagon under US President Donald Trump is enjoying greater freedom to run its wars the way it wants — and not constantly seek White House approval on important decisions.
Many in the military appreciate this increased autonomy, but critics charge it is raising civilian death rates, puts the lives of US troops at greater risk and leads to a lack of oversight of America’s conflicts.
Nowhere has the shift been more visible than in the fight against the Daesh in northern Syria, where under former President Barack Obama even minor tweaks to US plans underwent exhaustive White House scrutiny.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the Marine Corps has brought an artillery battery into Syria, and the army has flowed in hundreds of Rangers, bringing the total number of US forces there to almost 1,000.
Commanders are weighing the possibility of deploying hundreds more, and the Pentagon this week announced it had provided artillery support and choppered local forces behind enemy lines in a bid to seize a strategic dam.
The greater leeway marks a departure for the National Security Council (NSC), which coordinates foreign and military policy and implements the president’s national security agenda.
Under Obama, the NSC oversaw just about every aspect of America’s wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, with then Pentagon chief Ash Carter was kept on a short leash.
Trump, conversely, has repeatedly deferred to his Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, on military moves.
Mattis, a retired general, has delegated expanded authorities to his battlefield commanders.
“Jim Mattis has been given the latitude to conduct military operations in the way he sees best,” said Chris Sherwood, Pentagon spokesman.
The US is fighting Daesh in Iraq and Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan “by, with and through” local forces backed by US and allied air power.
That overall strategy has not changed, but commanders now have greater discretion to move troops and equipment around.
Troop increases were especially sensitive for Obama, who campaigned on a promise to end America’s Middle East wars and not put US boots on the ground.
Sen. John McCain, who heads the US Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic of what he calls NSC micromanagement.
The veteran lawmaker said he favors battlefield commanders getting greater latitude.
“We do no have to ask the 30-something-year-olds for permission to respond to an attack in Afghanistan,” he said.
McCain’s congressional counterpart Mac Thornberry described a visit he made to Afghanistan under Obama, when he overheard a call from an NSC staffer asking how much fuel was in the planes on the tarmac.
“The level of micromanagement was incredible, and of course by the time you work your way through the NSC process your target has moved,” he said.
Observers are also calling into question whether the Pentagon is allowing civilian casualties to mount.
Military officials vehemently deny this and stress that civilian safety is a top priority in approving any strike.
Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers, said Friday it had become so overwhelmed tracking civilian deaths allegedly caused by US and coalition planes that it has stopped tracking Russian strikes.
“The decision to temporarily suspend our Russia strike assessments has been a very difficult one to take,” Airwars director Chris Woods said.
“Moscow is still reportedly killing hundreds of civilians in Syria every month. But with coalition casualty claims escalating so steeply we believe our key focus at present needs to be on the US-led alliance.”
Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who heads the US Africa Command, said on Friday he hopes the White House will loosen restrictions for operations in Somalia, where the US is targeting militants.
“It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion,” he said, stressing new authorities would not come at the expense of civilians.
“The cardinal rule in these types of engagements is to not make more enemies than you already have,” Waldhauser said. “We are not going to turn Somalia into a free-fire zone.”
War on Daesh: Pentagon enjoying greater freedom under Trump
War on Daesh: Pentagon enjoying greater freedom under Trump
South Korea confirms Ukraine captured 2 North Korean soldiers
- One of the captured soldiers revealed during interrogation that North Korean forces had experienced “significant losses during battle,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service says
SEOUL: South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said Sunday it confirmed Ukraine captured two wounded North Korean soldiers this week in Russia, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said they were being questioned.
“The NIS, through real-time cooperation with Ukraine’s intelligence agency (SBU) has identified battlefield situations, including the capture of North Korean soldiers, and confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 in the Kursk battlefield in Russia,” the NIS said in a statement.
Kyiv, the United States and South Korea have accused nuclear-armed North Korea of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.
Kyiv on Saturday did not present direct evidence that the captured men were North Korean and AFP was unable to independently verify their nationality.
But the South Korean confirmation adds weight to Kyiv’s account, while neither Russia nor North Korea has reacted.
The NIS said one of the captured soldiers revealed during his interrogation that he received military training from Russian forces after arriving there in November.
“He initially believed he was being sent for training, realizing upon arrival in Russia that he had been deployed,” the NIS said.
The soldier said North Korean forces had experienced “significant losses during battle.”
The SBU also said the men had told interrogators they were experienced army soldiers, and one said he was sent to Russia for training, not to fight.
The NIS said it would continue to work with the SBU to share information on North Korean fighters in Ukraine.
Judge who blocked release of Trump report was ‘plainly’ wrong, special counsel tells appeals court
- The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to move swiftly in reversing a judge’s order that had blocked the agency from releasing any part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump.
The emergency motion late Friday is the latest back and forth in a court dispute over whether any portion of Smith’s report can be made public before Trump takes office Jan. 20. The push to release it before Trump’s inauguration reflects concerns that the Justice Department under the Trump administration, which will include members of his personal legal team in key leadership roles, would be in position to prevent the report from coming to light.
The Justice Department revealed in a separate filing on Saturday that Smith resigned from the department on Friday after having submitted his Trump report to the attorney general. The move had been expected.
The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The department has said it will not publicly disclose a separate volume — about Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021 — as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.
Both investigations resulted in indictments of Trump, though Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s election win. Smith cited Justice Department policy that bars the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency defense bid Thursday to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Trump’s efforts before Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to undo the results of the 2020 election. The appeals court left in place an injunction from a Trump-appointed lower court judge, Aileen Cannon, that said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
Lawyers for Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, then asked Cannon to extend her injunction and to hold a hearing on the merits of their request to halt the release of the report.
The Justice Department responded late Friday by asking the appeals court to immediately lift Cannon’s injunction altogether. The filing noted that in addition to temporarily blocking the release of the election interference report, Cannon’s action also prevents officials from sharing the classified documents report privately with the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees.
Cannon’s order is “plainly erroneous,” according to the department’s motion.
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department,” the Justice Department said. “The Attorney General thus has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations call for special counsels to produce reports at the conclusion of their work, and it’s customary for such documents to be made public no matter the subject.
William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report examining Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also released special counsel reports, including about Biden’s handling of classified information before Biden became president.
French far-right firebrand Le Pen buried in private ceremony
- The funeral was attended by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over her father’s political mantle, and other family members, political allies and close friends
LA TRINITÉ-SUR-MER, France: Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of France’s main postwar far-right movement, was buried Saturday in a private ceremony in his native Brittany amid tight security.
His funeral followed a mass in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the western region.
The funeral was attended by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over her father’s political mantle, and other family members, political allies and close friends.
Authorities beefed up security ahead of the ceremony, with barriers erected around the cemetery and dozens of police mobilized.
Security was tightened and protests banned after hundreds took to the streets in Paris and other cities to pop champagne corks and celebrate 96-year-old Le Pen’s death on Tuesday.
Marine Le Pen and one of her two sisters, Marie-Caroline, walked the few hundred meters between the family home and the small church of Saint-Joseph under blue skies in front of a small crowd of onlookers and several dozen journalists.
Among others attending the ceremony was Jordan Bardella, the leader of the party Le Pen co-founded, now called the National Rally, according to several sources.
Around 200 people were expected at the church service, after which Le Pen was buried in the vault where his parents rest.
“It’s moving for me to pay my last respects to him here and to pray for the salvation of his soul,” said one of the guests, Bruno Gollnisch, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s one-time right-hand man.
“He was a joyful comrade!“
Some locals praised Le Pen’s devotion to France.
“I came to pay tribute to a man who served France and loved France,” one mourner said.
“We’ve come to pay tribute to a great man who had the courage to say things,” said another. “He was a visionary. He loved France and its people and they had values that are being lost, like love of the nation.”
On Friday, regional authorities issued an order banning demonstrations to avoid “the risk of disruption and counter-demonstrations likely to provoke clashes.”
Separately, a ceremony will take place on January 16 at the Notre Dame du Val-de-Grace church in Paris that will be open to the public.
Opponents on the left said they could not mourn the death of a “fascist.”
But the government condemned rallies celebrating Le Pen’s passing. Prime Minister Francois Bayrou described him as a “fighter” and “figure of French political life,” comments that caused consternation on the left.
Le Pen’s staunchly anti-immigration National Front (FN), founded in 1972, won its first seats in the National Assembly in 1984.
Then, in 2002, Le Pen burst onto the frontline of French politics by edging Socialist Lionel Jospin in presidential elections to make the run-off against right-winger Jacques Chirac.
Nicknamed “the devil of the Republic” by opponents, he was often openly racist, made no secret of anti-Semitic views — for which he received criminal convictions — and boasted of torturing prisoners during France’s war against Algeria.
His politician daughter Marine Le Pen rapidly took steps toward making the far right an electable force, renaming it the National Rally (RN) and embarking on a policy known as “dediabolization” (de-demonization).
She threw her father out of the party for his anti-Semitism but the pair had reconciled in recent years.
President Emmanuel Macron did not make any personal comment on Le Pen’s death. His office issued a terse written statement saying history would judge Le Pen and adding that the president sent his condolences to the family.
But Le Pen’s death marked a sign of his political rehabilitation among senior RN figures who rushed to hail his contribution.
“He always served France and defended its identity and sovereignty,” RN party chief Bardella, 29, said in a tribute mentioning none of the controversies that surrounded his life.
Australia state premier calls synagogue attack an escalation in anti-Semitic crime
- Australia has seen a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the last year, including graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney
SYDNEY: The premier of Australia’s New South Wales state Chris Minns said on Sunday that an attack on a Sydney synagogue on Saturday marked an escalation in anti-Semitic crime in the state, after police said the attack was attempted arson.
Australia has seen a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the last year, including graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney, as well as an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne that police ruled as terrorism.
In the latest incident, police were notified of anti-Semitic graffiti on a synagogue in the inner suburb of Newtown early on Saturday. An arson attempt was also made on the synagogue, police later said.
“This is an escalation in anti-Semitic crime in New South Wales. Police and the government remain very concerned that an accelerant may have been used,” Minns, the leader of Australia’s most populous state, said on Sunday in a televised media conference alongside state police commissioner Karen Webb.
“In the last 24 hours, these matters have now been taken over by counter-terrorism command,” Webb said.
A house in Sydney’s east, a hub of the city’s Jewish community, was also daubed with anti-Semitic graffiti, police said on Saturday, adding they were also probing offensive comments on a street poster in the suburb of Marrickville.
On Friday, a special police task force was set up to investigate an attack on the Southern Sydney Synagogue in the suburb of Allawah in the early hours of Friday morning.
David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said on Sunday he welcomed extra resources promised by the government to probe the recent incidents.
“The New South Wales government has also provided us with additional funding to enhance Jewish communal security,” Ossip added in a statement.
On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, referring to the Southern Sydney Synagogue incident, said that there was “no place in Australia, our tolerant multicultural community, for this sort of criminal activity.”
The number of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents have increased in Australia since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel launched its war on Gaza. Some Jewish organizations have said the government has not taken sufficient action in response.
Biden honors Pope Francis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Biden is preparing to leave office Jan. 20 and has doled out honors to prominent individuals, including supporters and allies, in recent weeks
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Saturday honored Pope Francis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction, the highest civilian award given by the president, saying the pontiff was “a light of faith, hope, and love that shines brightly across the world.”
Biden had been scheduled to present the medal to the pope in person on Saturday in Rome on what was to be the final overseas trip of his presidency, but Biden canceled his travel plans so he could monitor the wildfires in California.
The White House said Biden bestowed the award to the pope during a phone call in which they also discussed efforts to promote peace and alleviate suffering around the world.
It’s the only time Biden has presented the honor with distinction during his presidency. Biden himself is a recipient of the award with distinction, recognized when he was vice president by then-President Barack Obama in a surprise ceremony eight years ago. That was the only time in Obama’s two terms when he awarded that version of the medal.
The citation for the pope says “his mission of serving the poor has never ceased. A loving pastor, he joyfully answers children’s questions about God. A challenging teacher, he commands us to fight for peace and protect the planet. A welcoming leader, he reaches out to different faiths.”
Biden is preparing to leave office Jan. 20 and has doled out honors to prominent individuals, including supporters and allies, in recent weeks.
