The Biden administration, like the Obama administration, wanted to get out of the Middle East where it believed America's presence caused rather than battled Sunni and Shia jihadis. Somehow the hate regenerates when we stop fighting it.
As senior U.S. administration officials and then President Biden himself raced to the region in a frantic effort to limit the size and scale of the conflict, it became clear that the administration’s minimalist Middle East policy is a calamitous failure. For two years, Biden and the National Security Council sought to increase focus on China and Russia while limiting focus on the Middle East. This was a strategic misstep that seems likely to force a reorganization of foreign policy.
After years of pulling forces out of the region, the Pentagon is now rushing to put them back. ...
From its inception, the Biden administration immediately sought to achieve a key Obama foreign policy objective by refocusing military resources away from the Middle East and toward countering China’s growing influence. The Obama Cabinet sought to prioritize great power competition with Beijing while ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, crises in the region — the Syrian Civil War, the stunning rise and sweep of ISIS and unrest in Libya — pulled the Obama White House back into the Middle East.
I don't think the key problem was pulling troops out of the Middle East. Our force levels and actions increased to fight rising threats. It made sense to retrench as we beat them back to face other threats. As long as we continued to help our friends who fought at our side continue to fight the reduced threats we could have held an economy-of-force front.
But we did not do that. We did not help our friends and instead stiff-armed them in outreaches to enemies in an updated Russia "Reset". We tried to ignore the Middle East, with the Biden/Obama team believing Israel was the problem and that Shia mullah-run Iran had to be strengthened to promote a stalemate that would lead to diplomacy.
And of course, they hold the old leftist view that America creates Sunni terrorists by fighting them. My view is ineffective use of force creates jihadis. Well, to be more precise, that allows a dysfunctional Islam to spawn jihadis. In many ways Westerners are collateral damage in a long struggle within Islam to defeat the jihadi strain within the religion. Our fight is a holding action to protect ourselves at home and help the good guys in the civil war.
But we keep thinking we can declare this Long War on terrorists "over"--with Afghanistan the latest futile try. And that in our absence our enemies will magically become policy wonks discussing bike paths and tax rates--and lately, woke nonsense.
And here we are, with more hate and violence so shortly after the administration was congratulating itself for the quiet Middle East.
And in that quiet--that was not the peace they imagined they created--our administration believed we no longer need to fight them "over there." But our jihadi enemies rebuilt, confident they were again the "strong horse." Let's pray our inattention hasn't helped our jihadi enemies prepare to kill us "over here."
I just don't know why we hate us. The outpouring of love on our campuses for Hamas monsters shows our self-hate is expanding. Although perhaps the anguish of Democrats over America killing Iranian terror master Soleimani should have been an early warning alarm blaring in the night. I guess it wasn't about Trump, after all. It was about the anguished protesters and their sick views of good and evil.
Be confident that we are the good guys and that the murdering jihadis are the bad guys.
Have a super sparkly day. And be careful out there.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
