CAMBRIDGE – Grappling with violent extremism will be a key challenge facing Americans for generations to come, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said at the Harvard Kennedy School Tuesday, hours after telling a congressional committee that more special forces were being deployed in Iraq to fight Islamic State.
The special operations troops will fight with the Iraqi military and have the capability to launch unilateral strikes into Syria, Carter said at a hearing of the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives. He characterized the increase as a component of the Pentagon's heightened efforts to battle Islamic State forces, calling the terrorist organization by an acronym, ISIL.
