Twenty years after 9/11….
President Joe Biden has ordered most American combat troops out of the Middle East…
It IS a Big accomplishment ….
At one time American had more than 100,000 boots on the ground….
Of course America WILl have troops in the area no matter what the Biden admin might say in public….
There WILL be several thousand American support troops there for certain functions, advisors, training, Spec Ops, and embassy Marines…..
But mass numbers of combat troops WILl be gone….
We’ll see if this lasts….
(And the militants there STAY in their region)
But the American military has changed directions in its focus….
China is the place the Pentagon is worried about these days…..
The moves reflect what is emerging as an unmistakable pillar of Biden’s foreign policy: seeking to push America past the post-9/11 phase of its history, ending 20 years of relentless focus on the Middle East and terrorism rather than threats like China and cyberattacks. The United States needs to “fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20,” Biden has said…
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But the trauma of the terrorist attacks two decades ago — which came out of a clear blue sky to kill nearly 3,000 Americans — has not faded, and some warn against turning the page prematurely. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has called Biden’s approach “a disaster in the making” that risks a resurgence of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, or ISIS.
And there are multiple signs that a clean break will not be easy. The Taliban has made significant gains in Afghanistan since the United States began pulling out. The American diplomats who remain there face significant challenges. Biden continues grappling with whether Iran, a key Middle East adversary, can be coaxed back into a nuclear deal…
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Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Iran’s growing influence is one of several reasons Biden’s shift might not go as planned. “If history is any guide, the U.S. risks getting sucked back into the Middle East for a range of reasons, including but not limited to terrorism,” Hall said….
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The U.S. military will retain a training and advisory role, however, and it is not yet clear whether the current force of about 2,500 would actually get much smaller. The United States had about 170,000 troops in Iraq in 2007, at the height of the U.S.-led war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups….
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“China is playing hardball. They want very much to be the dominant state,” another senior administration official said in an interview. “They also want to help usher us off the stage in a variety of ways.”
Redirecting U.S. foreign policy means not only a change in mind-set, but a new effort to build up the kind of infrastructure and capacity in Asia that the United States has long had in the Middle East.
“This is going to be hard,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “It’s going to require . . . a major regional shift from the Middle East to Asia. We’ve never had Asia as the central focus. That’s new.”….