Boots on the ground in the Middle East make Americans less safe, not more

America’s security interests are best served when our military can exercise decisive force by commencing operations at the time and place of its choosing. As the saying goes, our men and women in uniform should never be sent into a fair fight.

This sound logic has been ignored in Iraq and Syria, where small numbers of American troops stationed on remote and exposed bases are under fire from Iranian-backed militias. As of this writing, at least 60 American service members have sustained injuries in more than 73 attacks over the past few weeks.

The near misses are mounting. As the Wall Street Journal reported in early November, “A drone laden with explosives believed to have been launched by an Iranian-backed militia crashed into the upper floor of a U.S. barracks at a base in Iraq but failed to detonate.” The intent of this attack was not to threaten or hector U.S. service members. They aimed to kill them.  

Retaliatory airstrikes have been conducted against facilities and vehicles employed by hostile militias resulting in several militant casualties. However, while the U.S. should reserve the right to hit back — and hard — when our forces are in harm’s way, such operations will not prevent further attacks on vulnerable U.S. positions. To the contrary, these incidents may increase in size, scale and frequency. 

Many Americans would be puzzled to learn that nearly 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq and 900 of their counterparts are still stationed in Syria. These deployments are residual of a counter-Islamic State mission that technically ended with the territorial liquidation of the so-called caliphate in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019. At present, U.S. forces remain scattered across Iraq and stationed at al-Tanf in Syria on a mission ostensibly designed to advise and assist local forces working to ensure the “enduring defeat” of the terrorist group. 

Here it is helpful to differentiate the unambiguous goal of routing hostile forces and retaking territory captured by ISIS from the far murkier objective of extinguishing a deviant ideology. The U.S. military is a powerful force when its mission is clear, its resources deployed in measure, and a strong commitment to victory is assured through robust civic and congressional engagement. When we are careless with our military might — or only halfheartedly committed without the clear intention of winning — we endanger U.S. service members and our partners.  

All of this brings to mind a solemn and recently observed milestone. On Oct. 23, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut marked the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks bombing, when a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb killing 241 U.S. service members. Their mission was never clearly defined, they were bound by peacetime rules of engagement to maintain “neutral status,” and they took sniper and mortar fire from the moment their boots touched ground.  

To his credit, President Reagan faced the music and redeployed the Marines to ships offshore, quietly withdrawing them from a bloody and multisided civil war. This course correction saved further American lives, resources and resolve. Forty years removed, no one can accuse Reagan of exercising anything other than strategic awareness and political fortitude for his decision to extract American servicemen from an unnecessary danger.    

Let’s learn from this lesson. The time is now to reclaim the initiative and deny our adversaries a target by withdrawing our troops from Iraq and Syria. Whatever orders supposedly justify their missions should be weighed against the fact that, should serious harm befall them, a wider regional war may be inescapable. Such a conflict would serve neither American nor Israeli interests.  

Meanwhile, their presence is unrelated to the legitimate threat of devastating firepower the U.S. can bring to bear. The recent deployment of the Eisenhower and Ford Carrier Strike Groups, an Ohio-class nuclear submarine armed with 154 tomahawk cruise missiles, and numerous other warships in the area offer unequivocal evidence of our ability to project overwhelming force, defend American interests and assist our allies.  

In contrast, the presence of troops taking fire on vulnerable and isolated bases in Iraq and Syria seems to be predicated on a dare not to kill them. They were stationed there years before the current crisis began, and their continued deployment remains disconnected from any immediate goal. This is a wager that constricts, rather than permits, our freedom of action.  

The American military should be deployed to fight and win, not set as bait in a trap of our own making. As someone who spent a career fighting our long wars, I must place my trust in policymakers to find the courage to update their thinking, play to our strengths and avoid unnecessary catastrophe. Our country depends upon it. So, too, do the lives of those in harm’s way.

Jason Beardsley is a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and a 22-year veteran of the United States Army and Navy.