Hat tip to our friend Colonel John Mills (USA Ret.) for the pithy point that Joe Biden’s latest military action in the Middle East amounts to “punching holes in the desert” of empty base camps and long-gone firing positions after the Democrat president delayed retaliatory action against the Houthis to avoid Iranian and Iranian proxy casualties. (To subscribe to Col. Mills Substack click here.)
On Friday, U.S. forces struck 85 sites in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers and wounded 40 other people at a remote U.S. base in Jordan a week ago. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group which reports on war in Syria, confirmed that 29 members of Iranian militias were killed in airstrikes on 28 positions. Separately, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a state security force including Iran-backed groups, said that 16 its members were killed “including fighters and medics,” reported ABC News via WJBD Radio.
The ludicrous announcement of imminent action followed by a delay in actually taking action was really intended to demonstrate that yes, the Beta males running the Biden White House do have a few milliliters of testosterone between them, rather than doing anything concrete to defeat the real enemy in the Middle East – which is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We’ve often remarked about how Democrats play the arsonist and then try to be the fireman when their policies fail.
And in the national security sphere there is no better example of this dynamic than the way Obama and Biden have approached Iran.
This is hardly the first time, or the only instance where Joe Biden has acted as both the arsonist and the fireman in the war-torn Middle East.
Let’s not forget that only days before the October 7 Sabbath Massacre in Israel Biden was intent on releasing $6 to $10 billion to the Islamic Republic of Iran in a hostage ransom deal, while secretly negotiating a renewal of the Obama-agreed Iran nuclear weapons non-treaty treaty.
Yet, the Biden administration was only hours old when he sent a convoy of U.S. trucks and armored vehicles back into Syria – their mission was never spelled out by the Biden administration, but previous U.S. units have been tasked with preventing the overland link-up between Iran and their proxy the Hezbollah militia in Syria and Lebanon. (The troops killed and wounded in Jordan were part of this overall mission.)
However, only a month later in February of 2021 Biden ended support for the Saudi-led side in a five-year civil war in Yemen and took the Houthis off the terrorist list. The civil war has pitted a Saudi-led group against the Iranian-led and supplied Houthi movement – a Sharia supremacist militia responsible for countless killings in the Arabian Peninsula region’s poorest country.
The Houthi slogan is “Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam” and they have set about implementing that slogan with a ferocity that has seldom been matched, save for in the ISIS Caliphate at its bloody zenith.
So, just to be absolutely clear about what has been going on, the Biden administration was allegedly blocking Iran in the north of the Arabian Peninsula (Syria, Iraq and Lebanon) while at the same time giving the Iranian theocracy billions of dollars in ransom payments and empowering Iran in the south of the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen).
And now American troops are in harm’s way in both areas because the two zones of engagement have a very clear nexus – Iran – and Iran has equally clear goals, as the Houthis put it, “Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
The Iranian goal in Syria and in Yemen was and is the same – create a safe zone for the expansion of Iranian religious and military influence against the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. It made no sense to put American troops in harm’s way in Syria, Jordan and Iraq while withdrawing support for Arab forces that were actually fighting Iran and its allies the Houthis in Yemen.
If limiting the projection of Iranian military force and influence remains an American strategic goal, the Biden administration has been working against itself since the day it took office. The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), call today and tell your Senators and Representative that instead of punching holes in the desert the Biden administration should be using all aspects of our national power to defeat the expansion of Iran’s brand of militant Islamism.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com and is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns. A member of American MENSA, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for then-Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for retired Rep. Mac Thornberry formerly a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
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Drone Attack killed 3 soldiers