Yes, the US is 'entangled' in war
But it's not just Biden. It was ever thus.
This week the New York Times made a lot of my fellow liberals angry with an aggressive, surprising headline:
"Biden Promised Peace, but Will Leave His Successor a Nation Entangled in War"
Wait, what?
We don't feel "entangled in war" right now, do we? Oh, sure, Ukraine is battling Russia on the other side of the ocean, and Israel and Hamas are duking it out, and yes, the United States is arming the favored partisans in both conflicts. But we don't feel like a society at war, do we?
Right?
This was actually the softer version of the NYT story. The earlier version said Biden was leading a nation "consumed" by war, and that really ticked people off.
Here's Nicholas Grossman, a international relations prof at the University of Illinois:
So yeah, it didn't go over well.
So what is the Times' case for the U.S. being consumed or entangled or whatever in war?
“I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world,” Mr. Biden declared to the nation.
But while America is no longer waging a large-scale ground war like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, for much of his tenure Mr. Biden has seemed like a wartime leader.
Since pulling the last American troops out of Afghanistan three years ago, Mr. Biden has spent much of his presidency mobilizing public opinion and military might against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and playing a deeply engaged role in supporting Israel in its war in Gaza, and against Iran and the groups it backs.
"The risks of large-scale conflict," says Stephen Wertheim, "have become higher over the course of Biden’s presidency."
And who can doubt that's true?
If the Times exaggerates here, a bit, it's in seeming to suggest that those two conflicts are Biden's fault somehow. He didn't invade Ukraine. And he didn't launch a terrorist attack on Israel. He just responded with aid — in the form of armaments — to both countries.
Of course, responding is a choice.
I keep coming back to this:
“I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world,” Biden said.
And to this:
"US troops aren't in combat in any sizable overseas deployment for the first time since 2001."
The first is simply not true. The second leans heavily on the sizable qualifier.
Here's something that happened just the other day:
At least five U.S. personnel were injured in an attack against a military base in Iraq on Monday, U.S. officials told Reuters, as the Middle East braced for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week's killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Here's something that happened in January:
Three U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in Jordan, while more than 40 other service members were injured following an uncrewed aerial system attack at a military base near the Syrian border. Those service members were in Jordan to support Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the U.S. and coalition mission to ensure the defeat of ISIS.
U.S. and allied forces have been attacked more than 170 times during the Gaza war: 102 times in Syria, 70 in Iraq, and once in Jordan. The latter assault, in January, ignited a round of escalatory U.S. counterattacks against Iranian-allied targets that led Iran to rein in its proxies. As Israel has widened the Gaza war in recent weeks, with more provocative attacks in Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, Iran’s partners have resumed attacks on U.S. outposts across the region.
Well then. It's not "sizeable" forces fighting abroad. Only a few troops are being wounded or killed at any particular time.
It's true that we don't have large tank units facing off against rivals of similar power. But we have troops abroad all over the world, facing down dangers and basically trying to enforce the will of U.S. leaders through armed might.
Is that Biden's fault? Well. It's certainly a choice.
This, I should note, is the choice that's been made by every single U.S. president for at least a century.
Roosevelt had Lend-Lease.
Truman had Korea.
Ike oversaw U.S.-sponsored coups in Iran and Guatamala, and sent Marines into Beirut after Lebanon's pro-Western government was overthrown.
JFK and LBJ had the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam.
Nixon had Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Ford had the Mayaguez incident. Carter had Iran. Reagan had the Contras and Grenada and the bombing of Libya.
George H.W. Bush had Panama and the First Gulf War.
Clinton had the bombing in Sudan.
And you probably know a good chunk of everything that's happened in the 21st century.
This list, I should note, is a gloss. It doesn't capture every armed conflict, nor does it include all the places and times we've not had direct involvement in a conflict but still managed to be very involved, one way or the other, in how it was fought and resolved.
And some of it, I think, might have been justified. A lot of it probably wasn't.
Point being: We Americans are almost always entangled in wars or rumors of war.
Even when we Americans don't really notice what's being done in our name.
The surprise, then, is not the Times' headline or the shock and anger at it. It's that anybody bothered to pay attention.
There are a lot of reasons for this. The U.S. government doesn't necessarily like to draw a lot of attention to this stuff -- forced only when Americans are surprised and angered when one of their countrymen dies somewhere on the globe we had no idea existed. Media coverage isn't what it once was. And maybe a lot of us don't really care to know the details. There's a lot of other stuff going on, after all.
Point being, we are almost never "consumed" by war. The Times’ critics are right about that much, at least.
But we are almost always "entangled," directly or indirectly. And we should take that seriously, instead of getting mad when somebody points it out.