President Trump has no clear strategy regarding the Middle East, and the Democrats who hope to replace the president in this election have no alternatives. That much was clear at the Democratic presidential primary debate on Tuesday.
Trump has given no indication as to what we should prepare for when it comes to U.S. engagement with Iran after the regime organized an attack on our embassy in Iraq and we retaliated by taking out its top military commander in a drone strike.
No serious Democrat on the stage Tuesday would say we weren’t justified in that form of retaliation, and yet no Democrat would say what we should do next in the event of an escalation to war with Iran or any of the other wastelands in the Middle East.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota was asked at the debate, hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register, if she would draw down troops in the Middle East, as Trump had promised he himself would do. She said she would keep troops there, just not as many as there are now. She gave no number though. She did say, however, that she would start by “bringing people together.”
That’s not a plan.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said the same thing — that he would leave some troops but not as many as Trump. We don’t know how many he would leave, though, because he wouldn’t say.
Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont went after Biden, who just barely leads him in polls in early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire. “Joe and I listened to what Dick Cheney and George Bush and Rumsfeld had to say,” said Sanders. “I thought they were lying. I didn’t believe them for a moment. I took it to the floor. I did everything I could to prevent that war. Joe saw it differently.”
That’s a nice look back and perhaps speaks to Sanders’s judgment going forward, but what about the issue as it stands now?
No plan.
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said he wanted the United States “engaged” in the Middle East but without an “endless commitment of ground troops.” That’s nothing of note because he doesn’t know anything about policymaking in the Middle East. Yes, he destroyed a lot of computers during his brief deployment in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t equip him for national security decisions.
The only candidate to say anything stark was Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who suggested she would leave no troops in the Middle East. But of course, she would. They all do — because there is no clear way out without either absorbing a lot of damage ourselves or relinquishing the hopeless region to its own devices, which is basically to say, “Good luck killing each other!”
Trump has no answer on the Middle East. None of us do. And Democrats showed at the debate that they’re in the same position.
