Don't Send U.S. Troops to Israel

The U.S. should not be putting its soldiers in harm’s way to help a government while it commits genocide in Gaza.

The Biden administration is putting U.S. troops in Israel as it continues to provide unconditional support for Israel’s wars:

The United States is sending one of its most advanced missile defense systems and about 100 U.S. troops to Israel, deepening U.S. involvement in the escalating war in the Middle East amid U.S. expectations of an imminent Israeli assault on Iran.

The deployment of the missile defense battery and American personnel illustrates just how heavily Israel depends on the U.S. Far from being the self-reliant state that hawks like to celebrate, Israel has overreached so much in the last year that it has to rely on the U.S. to bail it out. Like clockwork, Biden has chosen to side with the war criminals in the Netanyahu government rather than let them face the consequences of their reckless actions. The president said he is doing this to “defend Israel,” but in reality he is providing their government with cover so that they can launch more attacks against other countries. Deploying defensive systems can be very destabilizing when those defenses reduce the costs of escalation.

Putting U.S. troops in a non-allied country currently waging at least two wars is unacceptable. Congress has not authorized a mission that will almost certainly put these troops in harm’s way from future Iranian and Hezbollah attacks. It doesn’t matter if they are there in a purely defensive capacity. Except when the U.S. or its forces are under attack, the president cannot lawfully put U.S. forces into a situation where they are likely to become engaged in hostilities without Congressional approval. In the words of the War Powers Resolution, “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances [bold mine-DL], are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Obviously none of those requirements has been met. Those troops have no business being in Israel, and Biden cannot lawfully send them there on his own.

The U.S. is increasing its direct involvement when our government ought to be cutting off all weapons transfers to Israel. It is illegal under U.S. law to continue arming the Israeli government because of its blocking of humanitarian aid and its myriad war crimes, so how much worse is it to send American forces to risk their lives on behalf of a government committing those crimes?

If Israel uses the additional protection provided by the U.S. to launch attacks on Iran, there is a real chance that U.S. forces across the region will be attacked in response. The Biden administration’s expanding support encourages the Israeli government to take increasingly dangerous and aggressive actions. That will bring the region ever closer to the larger conflagration that the administration has said that it doesn’t want.

Biden hasn’t just allowed this steady drift to a larger war. He has helped it along. At every point when he could have used leverage to rein Netanyahu in and bring the war in Gaza to an end, the president chose to send more weapons and he went out of his way to protect the government that repeatedly spat in his face. The result is that Gaza has been turned into a wasteland and southern Lebanon is being made to resemble Gaza. Faced with all this horror and destruction, the president’s response is embrace the Netanyahu government ever more tightly.

The U.S. should not be putting its soldiers in harm’s way to help a government while it commits genocide in Gaza. There is no treaty that obligates the U.S. to come to Israel’s aid, but the U.S. is obliged to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. No U.S. interests are served by this deployment, and it increases the risk that the U.S. ends up in yet another unnecessary Middle Eastern war.