Perhaps they’re being attacked because they shouldn’t be there

By Herbert Rothschild

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote a piece on March 5 following two days of his helicoptering from one U.S. military base to another in western Jordan and eastern Syria. What he wanted us to know is that there is “the other Middle East war” pitting Iran and its proxy militias against the U.S.

The threat is dire, according to Friedman. “These Iranian-armed Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthi fighters in Yemen may not look or seem like lethal threats, but do not be fooled. They have learned to arm, build, adapt and deploy some of the most sophisticated precision weaponry in the world. That weaponry, provided by Iran, can hit a 3-foot-wide target 500 miles away.”

Houthis have been attacking ships in the Gulf of Aden. The targets of Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq are U.S. bases in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. To date, thanks to highly sophisticated air defenses, there have been no significant troop losses. But, Friedman warns, “if one of these Iranian proxies gets ‘lucky’ and creates a mass casualty event by striking a U.S. warship or the barracks of one of the U.S. bases in Jordan or Syria … the U.S.-Iran conflict would surely come out of the shadows and become a direct shooting war in the region the world most depends on for its oil.”

For years Friedman has believed in U.S. responsibility to safeguard that oil from the nations that own it. He was a big cheerleader of our 2003 invasion of Iraq. While the Bush administration was careful to mask its true motive for the invasion, Friedman showed no such reluctance. In a column published in January of that year, he wrote, “There’s nothing illegitimate or immoral about the U.S. being concerned that an evil, megalomaniacal dictator might acquire excessive influence over the natural resource that powers the world’s industrial base.”

In May 2003, after the “coalition of the willing” had toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but before the ensuing chaos manifested itself, Friedman appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show” and justified the invasion by saying that there was a “terrorism bubble” in the Arab world and that “What we needed to do was to go over to that part of the world and take a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble.” Terrorists needed to see “American boys and girls going house to house — from Basra to Baghdad — and basically saying: Suck. On. This.”

Why after 20 years are our troops still in Iraq, as well as in Syria and Jordan, risking what Friedman says is an all-out war with still another major country in the Middle East? Here is his latest justification: “Rather than the spread of democracy this region experienced metastasizing disorder and failing states. At the same time, the big divide in the world became no longer between democracy and autocracy, but between order and disorder. The best case for U.S. forces remaining in eastern Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea is precisely so that the disorder ‘over there’ — from the likes of ISIS, failed states like Syria and the eating away of nation-states by Iranian proxy militias — doesn’t come ‘over here.’”

It’s hard to believe the New York Times pays Friedman to write such stuff! Has he forgotten that the invasion he championed supposedly to establish democracy in Iraq created much of the disorder he’s now bemoaning, including the rise of ISIS? Has he forgotten that the “terrorism bubble” that we “burst” simply dispersed terrorism over a wider field? Has he forgotten that the U.S. intervened militarily in Syria to make its government fail? Does he not understand that the very arrogance he expressed on “Charlie Rose” is what makes us despised by so many people in that part of the world? While it’s outlandish to think that Middle Easterners will bring “over here” the disorder that Friedman fears, long ago it seems to have colonized his own mental processes.

Although Friedman warned us about a wider war, he suggested no way to avoid it. Avoiding it requires identifying the reasons for these attacks, reasons Friedman would prefer not to acknowledge. First is our military presence. Only we fail to view us as an outside power, insisting, in the well-remembered tradition of the European powers that used to control much of the Middle East, that we have a right to dictate the affairs of the peoples who live there. Second is our support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, which has escalated into a campaign of mass slaughter.

When the Reuters news agency interviewed Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Jan. 9, he cited both these reasons for the current disorder. He called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi soil, which the Iraqi parliament already had done back in 2020. “There is a need to reorganize this relationship so that it is not a target or justification for any party, internal or foreign, to tamper with stability in Iraq and the region.” And he noted that only an end to Israel’s war on Gaza would stop the risk of regional escalation.

Four days before that interview, al-Sudani’s office had announced that the Iraqi government is beginning the process of removing the U.S.-led international military coalition from the country.

In response, the Pentagon announced that it had no plans to withdraw forces. “Right now, I’m not aware of any plans (for withdrawal). We continue to remain very focused on the defeat-ISIS mission,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told a news briefing. Actually, the Pentagon had declared the successful completion of the ISIS mission in 2021 and said it was shifting to advising and assisting Iraqi security forces, a distinction without a difference.

The Syrian government didn’t invite us to base our troops on its soil, but we did. The Iraqi government has asked us to leave, but we won’t. Is it any wonder that these bases come under attack? Friedman may be right that the big divide is no longer between democracy and autocracy but between order and disorder. What’s extraordinary is what side he believes his country is on.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear on Friday in Ashland.news. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].