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Three American troops were just killed and 40 more were wounded defending a remote U.S. outpost on the Jordanian border when the outpost was hit by a drone. But the tragedy is all the more infuriating when you look at who conducted the attack that killed our troops. The ugly truth is that we, U.S. taxpayers, funded the very militias that killed our troops.
In the wake of the attack, Biden released a statement saying that "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq" were behind the attack. Make no mistake about it: These so called Iranian-backed militants are part of the government of Iraq that we fund, arm, and train—to the tune of 3 billion dollars a year, not to mention the over 2 trillion and nearly 5,000 American troops we lost in Iraq during the Iraq war, or the other 6-10 billion Biden gave Iran to get back into the failed and foolish Iran deal.
And yet, our government is intent on racking up losses, adding to the failures that got us here in the first place. Biden and war hawks in D.C. will certainly use the loss of our troops to justify a new war against Iran, doubling down in the region. Biden and far too many in congress are comfortable sending our troops to continue to die in the Middle East, as if the nearly 7,000 we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't enough.
Sending troops to fight Iranian proxies would be a huge mistake, nothing more than the gamblers' fallacy of foreign policy—expecting a different result this time.
Iran knows this; indeed, it calculated for this very response ahead of launching the attacks on our troops. Because Iran directly benefits from us pouring more troops into the region and fighting them on their turf. Remember that Iran fights via proxy: think Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and Iraqi militias. These proxies are armed with rockets, drones, and small arms, which means they need proximity to their targets to attack and money to operate. Sending our troops to be cannon fodder for Iran's proxies doesn't hurt Iran in the slightest; the opposite.
We would be fools to continue to fight Iran on their terms by leaving our troops within range of their proxies and giving Iran access to U.S. funding via the government of Iraq.
Yet the Swamp's eagerness to send American troops off to die is of a piece of their larger agenda. While the Middle Eastern quagmire drags on, Biden and his Democrat lackeys in Congress refuse to secure our own border as fentanyl flows freely into our nation, killing 118,000 of our citizens and enabling an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants flood into our nation.
When you look at the absurdity of the situation, the only logical assessment is that Biden and our ruling class despise the American people.
What government not bent on the destruction of its people would deploy its military all over the globe, to the god forsaken deserts of Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, while actively facilitating an invasion of its own border?
This is not incompetence; this is the byproduct of hubris and malice.
So how to address Iran?
The most pragmatic way forward is to remove our troops from Iraq, Jordan, and Syria and cutting off every U.S. penny that can reach Iran.
The government of Iraq is a monster we created that Iran controls. We must abandon the lie that our two decades of bleeding in Iraq was successful. Our time in Iraq was a wasteful failure based on lies. It's past time to abandon those lies, learn from them, and move on—not triple down in failure.
Once we get our troops out, we will be free to strike Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria with impunity. We must avenge the deaths of our troops, but we must do it on our terms—not the enemy's terms. If we follow the advice of the war hawks and take this fight directly to Iranian soil, we will only make the Iranian people rally around the Ayatollah and his hard liners.
Instead, we should bleed Iran's proxies from the skies over Iraq and Syria where they can't reach us and take away their access to funding.
We must also immediately secure our border and begin hunting down and deporting every illegal alien who entered our nation. The attacks of 9/11 were conducted by less than 20 highly motivated men, and we've had 10 million enter our nation with no idea who they are. There is no bigger national security threat than this, coupled with the fentanyl that's killing Americans by tens of thousands.
Our military is for our nation's defense, not the defense of other nations or a tool for defense contractors to make fortunes in endless wars. Our enemies are pragmatic, self-interested and on the attack. Its time for us to finally put our nation first and get serious about defending our people or we will lose our nation.
Joe Kent is a retired Green Beret combat vet of Iraq. He served in the CIA as a paramilitary operations officer. He is running for Congress in Washington State.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
