Joe Biden thought he had it made with his abrupt pullout from Afghanistan…..
Donald Trump started it….
Biden accelerated it…
American troop draw downs….
THAT was greeted by efforts by Iran in trying to get MORE American troops out of the Middle East…
They figured that the Americans where tired of depositing their troops far from home ….
(And America began worrying MUCH MORE about China a place Biden HAS been able to engage and cool things…)
They were Right….
In applying the screws to Biden thru different proxies and the Israeli/Hamas conflict?
They have put President Biden is place he make a decision …
Something he has seemed to be uncomfortable about…
Projecting American military might beyond America’s borders….
Donald Trump IS an isolationist…
He does NOT look outward except if someone IS ‘paying him’….
Biden WOULD like part of that…
Iran’s actions and American lawmakers are NOT gonna allow him to do so….
For America to NOT be involved around the planet IS in ITSELF Dangerous….
Pearl Harbor, Sept 9-11 and even Israeli’s Oct. 7 HAVE shown….
Now, amid intense bombardment from Iran-backed groups, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, lawmakers and congressional aides say Washington’s deprioritization of the Middle East, and specifically its approach on Iran, has left the U.S. vulnerable. Many were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.
“Biden has spent much of the last three years … ignoring the Middle East completely,” said one former senior official who worked on Middle East matters during the Trump administration. “I’ve spent a long time in the Middle East, and part of me wants to forget it, too. That’s not the way it is. They ignored it. And now they are paying the price.”
Iranian-backed groups have launched hundreds of missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since the Hamas attack. Three U.S. troops were killed in Jordanover the weekend in a drone attack. Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked American freighters. And officials have calculated that Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, is planning attacks on Americans…
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Top officials dating back to the Obama administration have spent years pushing the U.S. to draw back from the region and redirect resources elsewhere to focus on countries that pose greater risks such as Russia and China.
Over the last decade, the CIA shut down its program to train the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group that formed in 2011 to fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his military. The Pentagon brought back thousands of forces from Iraq. The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan completely. Washington stopped its support for Saudi-led operations in Yemen. And the Middle East desks at both the National Security Council and the State Department shrunk.
“We started to really tune in to the sheer scale of Xi Jinping’s ambitions,” said a former senior official. “Not only were they regional, but they were really global. And it became harder and harder to ignore.”…
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In the hours following the attack by Hamas, officials in Washington — from the State Department to the Pentagon to the intelligence agencies — were unsure of exactly what had happened.
It appeared from news reports that Hamas militants crossed through Israel’s border by bulldozing fences and sending dozens of militants across via air gliders. The attack appeared well-coordinated. But U.S. officials had few other details.
Officials interviewed by POLITICO likened the scenes inside the White House, Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence agencies in the weeks following the initial attack to the days following the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in 2012.
Dozens of officials — many of whom were similarly unprepared for such a scenario — convened to game out potential points of attack on the U.S.
“It was like all of a sudden counterterrorism, and the Middle East was back in the conversation again,” a senior official said.
Leaders of the intelligence agencies held roundtables about threats posed by various terrorists in the region, including Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security had to sort and analyze potential domestic attacks. And the State Department authorized the voluntary departure of some personnel from the embassy in Beirut….
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The increase of U.S. military force to the Middle East comes as thousands of troops based in Iraq and Syria continue to come under attack by Iranian-backed militias. U.S. forces have been attacked more than 150 times since the middle of October, according to the Pentagon.
Houthi rebels, who operate in Yemen, also have attacked merchant ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. and the U.K. have launched several rounds of attacks on Houthi positions in Yemen in recent weeks in retaliation for the strikes and in an attempt to degrade the group’s capabilities.
Reprioritizing the Middle East will have to be weighed against the advantages that come with prioritizing Russia and China, said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee….