The Washington Post is out with an ‘UnOffical’ ‘pullback plan of American forces from the Middle East, which coincidently is ‘leaked’ after the Aircraft carrier Lincoln moral mess has splashed across the media with Trump and Hegseth showing NO empathy or sympathy to the situation….
Hmmmmm?
Trump’s Afghanistan 2.0?
Another President Trump abandoning a ‘Global America’…..
The damage to these facilities has prompted a once-in-a-generation chance for the Pentagon to reconsider its presence in the region. The Defense Department has already signaled that it might not rebuild its bases as they were before the conflict.
The evaluation is being led by the Pentagon’s policy office, though a senior Pentagon official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive analysis, said that the Joint Staff and U.S. Central Command were also studying the issue.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had not yet ordered a formal review of U.S. posture in the region, the official said. Instead, the official cast the analysis as “prudent planning” that could eventually inform how the administration addresses whether to rebuild the bases damaged during the war.
“Decisions are going to have to be made on some of this stuff,” the official said.
U.S. Central Command, which runs U.S. military operations in the Middle East, normally stations about 40,000 troops across almost 20 sites in a 1,500-mile arc from Jordan to Oman.
Since early this year, the military has surged warships, fighters, air defense assets and other scarce military equipment to the region to defend U.S. forces and carry out more than 13,000 strikes against Iran.
America’s largest and most permanent bases in the Middle East are in the Persian Gulf, where Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and where other states, such as Kuwait, house Army and Air Force assets.
Allies in the Gulf have for decades depended on U.S. forces for their defense. Any regional drawdown could leave states unable to defend themselves against Iranian attacks. Investing in domestic capabilities or partnering with other powers to offset the shortfall could take months to years.
People familiar with the Pentagon’s analysis said the issue is likely to intensify a debate between camps within the administration that support military interventions and others that have argued the Pentagon should curtail some of its security commitments to refocus on defending the U.S. homeland or deterring more powerful adversaries, like China….
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