American soldiers in the Middle East are not so much fighting forces as tripwires for further U.S. involvement in the Middle East. From Brad Pearce at libertarianinstitute.org:
Since the October 7 attacks restarted conflict between Israel and Hamas, U.S. troops have been under fire all over the Middle East. Thus far, most attacks have been deflected with minimal damage, but it is only a matter of time before one gets through and causes a serious loss of life.
Twenty-two years after the beginning of the Global War on Terror, the government rarely bothers to say what we are doing in the Middle East. There is an implication that by “fighting terrorism” we protect Israel, which is somehow crucial to our national security. In reality, our alliance with Israel harms U.S. national security, as demonstrated by the fact that we have been attacked alongside Israel. The War Party has gone from the spurious line of reasoning, “We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” to not really fighting them “over there” but just leaving our troops as sort of reverse hostages to draw fire so that we have a pretense to get drawn into any regional conflict. The continuing U.S. presence across the Middle East is nothing but a depraved exercise in putting American personnel in harm’s way for its own sake.
Though it’s hard to imagine now, until around fifty years ago the United States policy class was skeptical of Israel, and the Middle East was considered a strategic backwater. Perhaps in the 1970s the need for oil and the internal logic of the Cold War justified constructing a policy of trying to split the difference between making Israel a satrap while also maintaining a sphere of influence among the Arab states. However, that questionable strategy notwithstanding, the Cold War has been over for decades and the United States is now a net exporter of oil. All that justifies our presence with the American public is the detritus from years of propaganda which has left an unexamined belief that supporting Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” serves some sort of moral or strategic purpose.
