Changing course in the Middle East
Once, a Marine from Fayette County was laid to rest in a Connellsville cemetery, with his family, including his grieving mom and dad, beside the open grave.
Earlier on the day of the burial, the pastor at the funeral service eulogized the young leatherneck as a warrior in the service of God and country. As the Marine was lowered to his final resting place, there was still time to hope that something better might emerge from his sacrifice.
The time was the early 2000s, 9/11 was a fresh wound, and the U.S., engaged in Iraq, was well launched on two decades of conflict that would eventually take a total of some 7,000 American lives.
It’s years later now, and the U.S. is still engaged in the Middle East with weapons blazing. Thankfully, only a handful of American lives have been lost in the Trump administration’s war of choice against Iran.
(To be exact, 13 service members have been killed, including six who died in a plane refueling accident. This is the same number of American troops who fell during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.)
Something has to be done to extract the U.S. from the seemingly endless cycle of war-making in the Middle East. As Graham Platner, a Democrat running for the Senate in Maine and a veteran of the fighting, put it, “I don’t want other young Americans to go through what I’ve gone through.”
Platner added that he doubted that any military act he performed in Iraq or Afghanistan benefited any citizen of Maine.
In fact, the U.S. routing of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was a necessary act of retribution for 9/11. The war against the Taliban was less than stellar, however, given that the radical Islamist group is back in charge in Kabul. As for the U.S. war against Saddam’s Iraq, it was a botched affair from the get-go.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy director of national security during the Obama administration, recently offered some ideas on how the U.S. might get back on track in the Middle East.
First, Rhodes says, Congress should rescind its authorization for presidential war-making under the guise of fighting terrorism. In the absence of declaring war, Congress passed an authorization measure on Sept. 18, 2001 – seven days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Nearly a quarter century old, the resolution has far outlived its original purpose, which was to allow the George W. Bush administration to lawfully go after al-Qaeda and its leaders.
It’s as if the 1941 declaration of war against the Japanese was in force as late as 1966.
At the same time, according to Rhodes, Congress should commit the country to the use of arms only in self-defense and with specific congressional authorization.
Would not this amount to a weak-kneed response to a dangerous world, as some critics might charge?
The answer is no. History has demonstrated presidents can take measures short of war that nevertheless advance the national interest. Patrols of the North Atlantic by the U.S. Navy against German incursions in the months prior to Pearl Harbor is one example of a tough-minded policy that avoided all-out conflict without compromising American security.
Rhodes posted a number of other actions, including recommending that the U.S. “draw down American defense installations across the Middle East,” and reinvigorate America’s diplomatic and foreign aid capabilities.
It’s pretty clear that the Trump administration is not on a path to adopt any of Rhodes’s recommendations. Recently, President Trump asked Congress to boost yearly spending on the military by an astounding 40%.
It’s not even clear that the Rhodes reforms would satisfy the likes of Platner. But something different is required to change the momentum toward possible future conflicts in a volatile part of the world.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of “JFK Rising and Troubled Times.” He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.