My first thought, too. “Boots on the ground?” No biggie because Lord Obama sent them in. I wonder what the Syrians have to say this morning.
As you say, if this were a Republican president, we wouldn’t hear the end of it.
Hooray for our extremely brave special forces. I’m in awe of the men that volunteer for special,forces and then these tough ops.
If they have any common sense they'll say 'thank you'.
“Boots on the ground” is another of those tropes like “terrorists” and “terrorism” that have the effect of confusing those who use them about what is going on.
The “boots” have feet in them, and those feet are following somebody’s orders. In the case of Normandy 1944 (for example) the feet in the boots were going to Berlin or to meet the Red Army, whichever came first, per orders from General Eisenhower to destroy the armed forces of Germany and then to occupy and govern her.
In the case of Vietnam and Iraq, the boots were wandering around waiting to get killed or maimed to demonstrate how serious the asses in the chair were about their fantastic “nation building” or “counterinsurgency” unicorn hunts.
Confucius said, “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names”.