The 'Best Case' for Keeping Troops in the Middle East Is Nonsense

Friedman is taking a worn-out Bush-era talking point and trying to sell it as a justification for an unwanted American military presence in the Middle East twenty years later.

Tom Friedman unwittingly makes the case against keeping U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq =, and the Red Sea when he tries to defend it:

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.”

Friedman’s “best” case is total nonsense. He is taking a worn-out Bush-era talking point and trying to sell it as a justification for an unwanted American military presence in the Middle East twenty years later. If this is the “best” case for the current deployments, there is clearly no good reason for any of these missions.

Needless to say, Americans are not threatened by the remnants of ISIS, Syria, or Iran’s proxies. There is no realistic danger that any of that will come “over here.”