The Trump regime is proving more aggressive than the Obama administration when it comes to military engagement. In the words of a front page headline in The New York Times Thursday, “U.S. War Footprint Grows in Middle East, with No Endgame in Sight.” Not just the Middle East, but also Africa, and Afghanistan, where the United States has now been at war for 15 years, America’s longest war unless the Indian wars of 1787-1890 are counted.
What the larger footprint consists of are loosened rules on airstrikes and additional troops. The increase in troops has been small. For example, 300 Marines are being sent to Afghanistan, where they will join the 8,400 Americans and 5,924 NATO troops already there. Some 400 troops are being sent to Syria, another 200 to join the 5,000 in Iraq, where, Pr*sident Trump noted Tuesday, "our soldiers are fighting like never before." That would be news to 2 million soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors who served in the Iraq war, and in which 4,500 were killed.
It should also be noticed that those troops aren’t supposed to be fighting at all, but rather training Iraqis and Kurds, and engaging in combat only incidentally in self defense.
The expansion of airstrikes has been large, with more attacks—38—deployed against al-Qaida in Yemen in the first few days of March than in any year of Obama’s two terms. For the whole month so far, there have been 49 U.S. airstrikes in Yemen.
Trump has quickly greenlighted attacks that the Obama administration sometimes pondered for weeks. And he has shown little concern for the growing numbers of civilians killed in such attacks. Indeed, he’s relaxed the airstrike rules meant to protect Somali civilians. And while he is keen on using the military, it’s not being supported by constant diplomacy unlike what was done under Obama. Based on his proposed boost in military spending and slashing of the State Department budget, Trump’s priorities are clear, and civilian deaths aren’t high up the list.
Ben Hubbard and Michael Gordon report:
Robert Malley, a former senior official in the Obama administration and now vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group, said the uptick in military involvement since Mr. Trump took office did not appear to have been accompanied by increased planning for the day after potential military victories.
“The military will be the first to tell you that a military operation is only as good as the diplomatic and political plan that comes with it,” Mr. Malley said. [...]
Others fear that greater military involvement could drag the United States into murky wars and that increased civilian deaths could feed anti-Americanism and jihadist propaganda.
Nobody should be surprised. Candidate Donald Trump wasn’t shy during the campaign about what he planned to do in the fight against al-Qaida and the Islamic State (ISIS). Labeling Obama’s Middle East policy one of “weakness” and “political correctness,” Trump once said he would “bomb the shit out of” oil facilities controlled by ISIS and later said “with the terrorists, you have to take out their families.”
Some airstrikes are obviously taking out families who have nothing to do with terrorism. “Collateral damage” or whatever other creepy euphemism is being used nowadays to describe such “mistakes.” One such seems to have occurred on March 17, when scores of civilians are said to have been killed in attacks on Mosul, an ISIS stronghold for two years. The civilian loss in that attack was certainly one of the worst such tolls. But scarcely the only instance.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is deploying more troops in the complicated and dangerous war in Syria. The total is now or soon will be about 900, including a Marine artillery unit and a team of Army Rangers. They are there for the assault of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of ISIS. The U.S. general in charge of Central Command says more U.S. troops may be needed for that fight.
Meanwhile, a few prominent members of Congress have renewed calls to expand the relatively small U.S.-NATO force in Afghanistan in the 15th year of the war there. During that time, there have been innumerable U.S. military commanders and different troops levels deployed under during strategies. As a result of surges in March and December of 2009, Obama raised the troop level to 100,000, and then began a steady withdrawal that brought deployment down to current level of 8,400. Now, however, there’s a growing possibility a few thousand more troops will be added to those already there.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the late 2001 U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, the rationale was easily understood at home and abroad—a predictable response to a murderous attack on America by a group whose members were guests of the Afghan Taliban. But it’s not 2001 anymore. Osama bin Laden has been deep-sixed. Al-Qaida and its offspring still exist, but scattered across a half dozen nations. Backward as they are, the Taliban poses no terrorist threat to the United States.
There is no endgame in sight in Afghanistan that is worth adding more names to the lists of 2,393 Americans, 1,105 NATO troops, and countless Afghan civilians who have died in that conflict. And no foreign power is ready and waiting to pounce when the U.S. and NATO troops withdraw.
What ought to be on the table is a reduced U.S. military footprint, not an expanded one.