Micromanaging

Ash Carter charges Congress is micromanaging Syria fight

By AUSTIN WRIGHT

Congress is using its power of the purse to micromanage the U.S. war plan in Syria in ways that risk “inhibiting results," Defense Secretary Ash Carter charged Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Chairman John McCain’s retort: Congressional oversight is necessary given the failure of a previous effort to train and equip Syrian rebels that resulted in just four or five trained fighters willing to take on the Islamic State.

“When we spent several hundred million dollars the last time, the commander of Central Command testified before this committee that we had four or five people left,” the Republican senator from Arizona said. He noted that he had predicted the initial train-and-equip program would be an “abysmal failure” because recruits were required to pledge to fight ISIL and not the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In a fiery hearing, Carter and McCain sparred over the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Syria, with the senator urging the defense secretary to do more to retake the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul. He said he wanted a ground force made up mainly of troops from Arab allies to take on the terrorist network.

Carter responded that such a force would be ideal, but that he had no indication from Arab countries that they’d be willing to commit to it.

Instead, the Pentagon chief outlined an updated U.S. approach to training and equipping Syrian rebels. Rather than create a new force, as was attempted in the first iteration of the train-and-equip program, the Pentagon is now seeking to aid existing Syrian rebels already on the ground fighting ISIL.

But Carter said the program was hamstrung by congressional oversight, with lawmakers holding up $349 million in funding. The way the train-and-equip program is set up, he noted, funds can’t be spent without the approval of the four congressional defense panels — the House and Senate Armed Services committees and Defense Appropriations subcommittees.

“We are required to submit reprogramming requests to the four congressional defense committees — and, so far on these funds, we’ve received differing responses, on differing timelines and sometimes with conflicting demands,” Carter said. “As it stands, the current setup invites troubling micromanagement of a wartime effort and risks inhibiting results.”

Carter's plea is the latest development in a months-long standoff with Congress over funding to support "vetted" Syrian rebels.

The congressional defense panels continue holding up the final $49 billion of the $500 million Syria train-and-equip fund approved in the fiscal 2015 budget, plus $300 million in fiscal 2016 funds that the Pentagon requested last month.