Tom Friedman unwittingly makes the case against keeping U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq =, and the Red Sea when he tries to defend it:
The best case for U.S. forces remaining in eastern Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea is precisely so that the disorder “over there” — from the likes of ISIS, failed states like Syria and the eating away of nation-states by Iranian proxy militias — doesn’t come “over here.”
Friedman’s “best” case is total nonsense. He is taking a worn-out Bush-era talking point and trying to sell it as a justification for an unwanted American military presence in the Middle East twenty years later. If this is the “best” case for the current deployments, there is clearly no good reason for any of these missions.
Needless to say, Americans are not threatened by the remnants of ISIS, Syria, or Iran’s proxies. There is no realistic danger that any of that will come “over here.”
Keeping troops as sitting ducks in Iraq and Syria is the stupidest possible way of guarding against such an unlikely development. Having U.S. forces in places where they aren’t wanted and where local groups are determined to keep attacking them until they leave is how you create new enemies and get into unnecessary conflicts. It does not make anyone more secure.
Keeping troops and sailors in harm’s way in these parts of the Middle East isn’t protecting American interests. It is just putting American military personnel at risk so that they can serve as tripwires for an unnecessary war with Iran. That’s absolutely not worth the risk.
Friedman recounts a scene that he witnessed at Tanf, the small American base in southeastern Syria where under a thousand U.S. troops are stationed without Congressional authorization or international mandate. He gushes about how the head of Centcom, Gen. Kurilla, told the assembled troops that they swear an oath to an idea “that all men and women are created equal.” In fact, they swear an oath to defend the Constitution, the same one that is being violated every day by their unauthorized presence in Syria. Regardless, one would struggle to explain what keeping those troops in Syria year after year has to do with protecting that idea or the Constitution.
At one point, Friedman comments on the state of the Middle East and how “this region experienced metastasizing disorder and failing states” over the last few decades. As usual, he misses or ignores that one of the big reasons that there has been “metastasizing disorder” in the region was that the U.S. kept mucking around in the region’s political affairs and involving itself in the region’s conflicts. More than twenty years after the invasion of Iraq that Friedman enthusiastically supported, he is still out there promoting the fantasy that the U.S. is on the side of maintaining regional order when our government has been destabilizing one country after another.