Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not represent the views of Pulse staff or CCA as a whole.
Continuing in the steps of Obama’s infamous presidency and essentially every US president, Biden has taken up the US’s pattern of imperialistic war crimes in the Middle East. On Friday, February 26th, Biden carried out his first military action as president and targeted airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed fighters in Syria. This was done as an act of retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier in February that resulted in the death of a civilian contractor and a wounded US service member and other coalition groups. The strikes, administered by Biden, killed 22 people after hitting three trucks loaded with munitions and were also said to have destroyed border posts used by Iranian militia groups.
President after president, we have been falsely promised that we would remove our soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. With an interactive series of conditions and conflicts, Syria has become the perfect ground for bloodshed. The American government loves to fuel the narrative that they are the main character of the world when in reality they’re narrow-minded, imperialistic people who bomb for their own benefit. There is currently ongoing discourse around this airstrike, whether or not it was legally justified, but this has a bigger underlying issue: the US still actively involves themselves in the Middle East.
As long as the US remains present in the Middle East, these attacks will never stop. Our presence in these countries, with embassies and bases aside, will almost always guarantee violence and bloodshed because as long as we are there, militia groups from corresponding Middle Eastern countries will continue to send their men to die just to get us out. At the end of the day, who can blame themt? Even US presidents know the extent of the damage that the US and western powers have caused to the Middle East — the unfathomable harm and destruction that they have caused and continue to cause. We have interfered with them in every aspect imaginable: through war and deposition of leaders, we constantly involve ourselves in this part of the world and almost every time it ends with blood drawn. Are we surprised when we see terrorist organizations rise? When all of these young men look at their surroundings and see a demolished wasteland caused by the US? Are we really surprised by the emergence of terrorist groups when we are directly responsible for creating the atmosphere for this sort of mindset?
We continue to perpetuate the same problem and we have been for decades now. An American will be killed on foreign soil and what then? Send another airstrike? Continue the same pattern that we have been following for years? We cannot continue with this inefficient cycle of killing and bombing, if not we will end up at square one and nothing will have been solved and human lives would have been lost. The solution to this problem that we have with the Middle East does not involve retaliation. The answer? We simply remove our presence.