If Thursday’s U.S. airstrikes on Iraqi Shiite militia targets near Baghdad conjured up feelings of deja vu, don’t fret: Nearly three months ago, we all saw the same exact movie play out in real-time.
Last December, a Shiite militia group lobbed rockets at an Iraqi military base where U.S. troops were stationed, killing one American contractor and leaving part of the facility damaged. President Trump chose to respond by ordering bombing runs against five militia targets in Iraq and Syria, killing more than 25 militiamen. We all know how that story ended. In early January, the Trump administration struck a car carrying Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Shiite militia commander Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, culminating days later in a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles on a joint Iraqi-U.S. air base. While the ballistic missile attack didn’t claim any lives, more than 100 U.S. service members suffered from traumatic brain injuries.
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