In a sudden and alarming move, President Obama has told the Pentagon to send special forces — ground troops — into arguably the most dangerous country in the world at the moment: Syria.

According to ABC News, the elite military members will advise the Syrian opposition in its fight against ISIS, and will mark the first time the U.S. will have a presence in the troubled nation that isn’t in the air. And while their mission is supposed to remain “advisory”, we know how that can quickly turn into a combat role, as we unfortunately just saw with Delta Force soldier Joshua Wheeler last week.

The White House — via a senior official — says the decision “is consistent with strategy to intensify the battle against ISIS”.

But is it? Here’s a video from two years ago that has President Obama promising the American people — from the White House — that he “will not put American boots on the ground in Syria”:

So much for that.

More from ABC News:

A U.S. official says the White House will announce that Obama has authorized somewhere around 50 special operations forces to go into Syria to work with the rebel group known as the Syrian Arab Coalition. These forces will work along the Syrian border and not on the front lines with the rebel groups. They will provide training, assistance and advise just as U.S. troopsare doing in Iraq.

They will not be in combat, they will work with the Syrian Arab Coalition to facilitate airstrikes, but they are not forward air controllers. They will be at the group’s headquarters speeding up coordination of potential airstrikes.

The White House is expected to characterize the change as “an enhancement” of the existing training, advisory and assist mission in Iraq against ISIS. There will not be additional troops for Iraq though there will likely be a redistribution of existing forces there to better work with Iraqi forces.

Here’s Obama telling CBS’s 60 Minutes a few weeks ago about the previous plan to destroy ISIS in Syria — a mission that failed miserably, and blew through a ton of taxpayer dough:

https://youtu.be/2wGM-VA6ocg?t=4m47s