(Dobbs) Sometimes We Walk Into Dangerous Neighborhoods. Sometimes There Is No Choice.
Would we want China, Russia, Iran to police the world instead?
If you go into a crime-ridden neighborhood, you have to expect that someone might commit a crime against you. Your car might be broken into, your wallet might be taken, you might get mugged, or worse.
So it is on a global scale for the United States of America. If we put our people into dangerous neighborhoods infested with terrorists, we have to expect that the terrorists will go after us.
Yet because of who we are, because of what we are, we sometimes have to walk into some of the most dangerous neighborhoods on earth. It is one of the painful costs of our power.
We could pull back. We could leave evil forces to act without restraint. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Houthis, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram, the Taliban.
But that would be recklessly counterproductive, because even with American pressure persistently applied to keep these terrorists under their rocks, they crawl out. Sometimes they subjugate the populations within which they live. Sometimes they attack us and our allies. So yes, we could pull back, but then their attacks, and the harm they cause, would only be worse.
That’s why, while many Americans mistakenly might think that we no longer station soldiers in war-torn countries in the Middle East, we do. We still have troops in both Syria and Iraq. The ones in Syria— some 900 of them in the northeastern part of the country— are a counterforce to what’s left of ISIS. In Iraq, there are some 2,500 troops. That’s well down from the 170,000 we sent there at the height of the Iraq War, but they’re still “advising and assisting” the Iraqi government that is constantly fighting a rear-guard action against terrorists.
We do pay a price. Our soldiers stay in harm’s way. They always face attacks. They are seen by adversaries as occupiers and, since the U.S. embraced Israel after the October 7th massacre, they are seen as abettors to the deaths of Palestinians. Since October, rockets and drones have been launched against American troops at several bases in the region. There have been more than a hundred such strikes. They have not wreaked total havoc but the last one— the last as of this writing— was a drone attack against U.S. soldiers at the Irbil air base in northern Iraq. Three Americans were hurt, one of them critically.
So Monday— Christmas day— we fired back. We launched air strikes against three bases in northern Iraq believed to be used by terrorist groups backed by Iran. The U.S. Central Command said on X, "These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks.” According to CentCom, they “likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants.”
It’s part of a constant chain of defense. Last month, after assaults against our soldiers in Syria, the U.S. carried out air strikes against Iran-linked militias there. Only a week ago the United States put together a multinational task force to protect ships in the Suez Canal and the Red Sea from missile and drone attacks by Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
This is not a war on the scale of the war right now in Gaza…. or the hot wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Congo, and elsewhere. But it is an ongoing and imperative part of the war on terrorism. We could pull back, but that would leave the terrorists in charge.
In my years covering conflicts overseas, I saw our government take missteps, sometimes very big ones that put us perilously close to the edge of the cliff. But if we are to be a superpower, if we are to be a force in the free world, then those are chances we have to take and risks we have to accept. Because whether everyone likes it or not, we are policeman to the world. Especially in the Middle East, especially as a counter to China in the Pacific.
There is risk to being that policeman, but the alternative is even worse. If we don’t wear the badge, someone else will. It could be China, it could be Russia, it could be Iran. Living in the world that they would shape would be a lot more dangerous and a lot more undemocratic than the world we live in now.
So as a nation, we walk into dangerous neighborhoods. There is no choice.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
wow! excellent, so informative and helpful. we get to read what most never see. thank you, John
Well said! Spot on. Thank you Greg