Widening the War: The US Sends Troops to Israel
The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring security, will merely serve to make it more vulnerable and unstable than ever. In that mix and mess will be its greatest sponsor and guardian, the United States, a giant of almost blind antiquity in all matters concerning the Jewish state.
In a measure that should have garnered bold headlines, the Biden administration has announced the deployment of some 100 US soldiers to Israel who will be responsible for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. They are being sent to a conflict that resembles a train travelling at high speed, with no risk of stopping. As Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised in the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile assault on his country, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising.” It would be of such a nature that “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
In an October 16 meeting between the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Gallant, the deployment of a mobile THAAD battery was seen “as an operational example of the United States’ ironclad support to the defense of Israel.” Largely meaningless bits of advice were offered to Gallant: that Israel “continue taking steps to address the dire humanitarian situation” and take “all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security” of UN peacekeepers operating in Lebanon’s south.
The charade continued the next day in a conversation between Austin and Gallant discussing the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. THAAD was again mentioned as essential for Israel’s “right to defence itself” while representing the “United States’ unwavering, enduring, and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” (“Ironclad” would seem to be the word of the moment, neatly accompanying Israel’s own Iron Dome defence system.)
A statement from the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, was a fatuous effort in minimising the dangers of the deployment. The battery would merely “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system,” affirm the ongoing commitment to Israel’s defence and “defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks from Iran.”
The very public presence of US troops, working alongside their Israeli counterparts in anticipation of broadening conflict, does not merely suggest Washington’s failure to contain their ally. It entails a promise of ceaseless supply, bolstering and emboldening. Furthermore, it will involve placing US troops in harm’s way, a quixotic invitation if ever there was one.
As things stand, the US is already imperilling its troops by deploying them in a series of bases in Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Iran’s armed affiliates have been making their presence felt, harrying the stationed troops with increasing regularity since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7 last year. A gradual, attritive toll is registering, featuring such attacks as those on the Tower 22 base in northern Jordan in January that left three US soldiers dead.
Writing in August for The Guardian, former US army major Harrison Mann eventually realised an awful truth about the mounting assaults on these sandy outposts of the US imperium: “there was no real plan to protect US troops beyond leaving them in their small, isolated bases while local militants, emboldened and agitated by US support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, used them for target practice.” To send more aircraft and warships to the Middle East also served to encourage “reckless escalation towards a wider war,” providing insurance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he could be protected “from the consequences of his actions.”
Daniel Davis, a military expert at Defense Priorities, is firmly logical on the point of enlisting US personnel in the Israeli cause. “Naturally, if Americans are killed in the execution of their duties, there will be howls from the pro-war hawks in the West ‘demanding’ the president ‘protect our troops’ by firing back on Iran.” It was “exactly the sort of thing that gets nations sucked into war they have no interest in fighting.”
Polling, insofar as that measure counts, suggests that enthusiasm for enrolling US troops in Israel’s defence is far from warm. In results from a survey published by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in August, some four in ten polled would favour sending US troops to defend Israel if it was attacked by Iran. Of the sample, 53% of Republicans would favour defending Israel in that context, along with four in 10 independents (42%), and a third of Democrats (34%).
There have also been some mutterings from the Pentagon itself about Israel’s burgeoning military effort, in particular against the Lebanese Iran-backed militia, Hezbollah. In a report from The New York Times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., is said to be worried about the widening US presence in the region, a fact that would hamper overall “readiness” of the US in other conflicts. Being worried is just the start of it.
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10 comments
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Harry Lime -
Michael Anderson -
Canguro -
Steve Davis -
paul walter -
Pete -
Canguro -
Andrew Smith -
Clakka -
Canguro
Return to home pageAll going according to plan…what plan you ask? No plan at all,as our great and mighty “friend” sleepwalks into another disaster,learning absolutely nothing from recent, pointless, killing,country wasting wars.Thrilling for the arms industry,and the brainless war hawks,e.g. Hastie,Paterson,Boofhead, etc.
For “Ironclad”, read maybe,perhaps,or fuck right off.
Orwell said “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”
The extended Orwell quote mentioned above is…
“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.” [1984]
Orwell’s book was published in June 1949, closely following WWII; since then we have had – depending on how one defines conflict – war vs. skirmish vs. squabble – hundreds of instances of armed conflict both at internecine and extraterritorial levels. One needs to be completely disillusioned on the nature of this activity – war is an unending and enduring phenomenon, and no amount of hand-wringing or diplomatic speak or outrage from within civilian communities is ever going to change that fact. Once mankind had the tools for widespread destruction in its hands, that step up from rocks & sticks to guns & missiles & planes, and ultimately to nuclear weapons, it was assured that the killings would exponentially increase on a never-imagined scale.
I’ve said it before in these pages, several times, that there’s something deeply pathological in the makeup of the human psyche, and until that aspect of our perceptive being is eradicated, nothing will change.
Canguro, good points.
I don’t think “that aspect of our perceptive being” can be eradicated.
I believe it’s an instinct for brutality that enabled us to survive way back before we were human.
If I’m right, it raises the question as to why this brutal instinct seems so influential today.
I think you can see where I’m going with this.
A persistent influential factor in global affairs must be inherent in the prevailing “philosophy”.
And how charming to learn that some US bombing missions take off from their NT bases.
Now we know why our supposed government did not want the last year talked about.
Seems the US is guided by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committe) which, from what I read, may as well have its own office in the Whitey House. Follow the money. War is profitable, especially when someone else is supplying the bombs.
Zionists have a plan, and a happy, stable outcome for Western countries is not one of the Key Performance Indicators?
Look at it straight, what does anyone think is the intention of the Zionist realtards? One off genocide in Gaza? Really?
My sister, from whom I am, unashamedly, completely estranged, has a son, my only nephew, who is embedded within the RAAF as a ground support technician, and by virtue of that role has seen duty in offshore locations such as the Middle East supporting USAF operation against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen et al. It was bad enough that she had an executive role in Robodebt as a Centrelink staffer of some responsibility, but fuelling the flames that inevitably arose as a function of our extremely dysfunctional years of arising by encouraging her offspring to pursue a career which actively supports the massacre of innocents was a step too far. My rational consideration was based on the fact that we were subjected to a parent who’d been ruined by virtue of his involvement in a war, and here she was happy to support kiddo in his preferred choice of career, viz., a military activity. 🙁
John Cleese co-authored a book with Robin Skynner, called Families and How to Survive Them; it’s not the last word on what goes awry in our upbringing and there are many other works of deeper and more substantial investigation but the title is significant, the initial years are critical to everything that follows.
Shock news, military technicians and advisors, whether you agree or not, assisting an ally? Or possibly ensuring IDF don’t misuse THAAD systems given to defend vs Iran, but not for other purposes (not unusual for the provider to supervise and restrict usage)
Similar arguments were offered to try deny Ukraine HIMARS etc. and encourage ‘slow walking’ by the White House with threats or fear of escalation vs Putin’s regime.
Meanwhile North Korean soldiers are now turning up in Russia, but evidence of them already trying to flee towards Ukrainian lines and the West for some reason?
It stands to reason that they’ll persist. With their partners in oppression and extraction from all regions through the Levant and nothward all the way to Kazakhstan from the Black Sea all the way to India (their so-called ‘axis of evil’) – in reality, that despite their incessant meddling, the domains that refuse to accede to their hegemonic extractions.
To the wideners of war, ‘globalization’ does not mean diplomacy and detente, leading to sustainable cooperative interdependence, amity and the enhancement of the beauties of diverse cultures.
As Africa’s population heads to more than 2.5 billion by 2050, one can only wonder about what the olde declining Euro-American imperialists will go back there to do over coming years.
The lizard brain at work again in America; arms to the value of USD 2bn being sold to Taiwan, the 17th such sale to the island under the Biden administration.
They just can’t help themselves, can they, these fossilised warmongering dinosaurs? Albeit a false equivalence, given how entrenched the MIC is with the body politic of that blighted nation, conjoined twins destined to die in an agonising spasm of delayed departure, but USD 2 billion would go a long way towards improving the lives of their citizens.
Hah! Silly me! Lest we forget. The lives of their citizens mean diddly squat to the governments, collectively, of the black hole that boasts of its commitment to life, liberty & freedom, apart from stripping dollars out of their pockets and utilising them for cannon fodder in other people’s lands.