Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the United States will do what is necessary to “protect” troops overseas after a targeted missile strike last month in Iraq.
“We’ll strike, if that’s what we think we need to do, at a time and place of our own choosing. We demand the right to protect our troops,” Austin said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
“What they should draw from this, again, is that we’re going to defend our troops, and our response will be thoughtful,” he continued. “It will be appropriate. We would hope that they would choose to do the right things.”
Austin’s comments follow a Feb. 15 missile strike that injured five U.S. contractors in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. One contractor died of a cardiac episode while taking shelter during the bombardment, and at least 10 munitions detonated during the assault.
ONE CONTRACTOR DEAD AFTER MISSILES EXPLODE NEAR US FORCES IN IRAQI KURDISTAN
A week after the attack, President Biden ordered a precision airstrike against “Iranian-backed militant groups” in Syria. It is unclear whether or not the bombings were related to the Iraqi missile strike.
“At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement at the time. “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel. Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).”
Biden on the campaign trail, however, pledged to narrow the military’s focus to “Al-Qaeda and ISIS” and pledged to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.”
READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER BY CLICKING HERE
“Biden will end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” his campaign website read. “As he has long argued, Biden will bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan and narrowly focus our mission on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And he will end our support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Staying entrenched in unwinnable conflicts only drains our capacity to lead on other issues that require our attention, and it prevents us from rebuilding the other instruments of American power.”
