Our Troops Deserve More Than This |
Our Troops Deserve More Than This
By Chuck Hagel and Leon E. Panetta
Mr. Hagel and Mr. Panetta are both former secretaries of defense.
As former secretaries of defense, we understand the profound responsibility of deploying our men and women in uniform into harm’s way. It is critical that there be a clear objective, a strategy to achieve the objective and an endgame to bring our forces back home. The president, Congress and the American people should be unified when a country goes to war.
There are now over 50,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, with President Trump reportedly considering sending forces on missions to extract Iran’s uranium or to occupy Kharg Island. Both operations are very risky and could result in heavy casualties and prolong the war.
Because their lives are on the line, we owe it to these committed American service members and their families to be truthful about the risks involved and why we are at war. There was a case to be made that Iran had a history of threatening the stability of the United States, Israel and other nations in the Middle East. Its leaders’ support for terrorism, arming dangerous proxy forces, developing large numbers of missiles that could strike regional targets and efforts to develop nuclear capability represented a genuine threat to peace and stability in the region.
But it is also true that the 12-day war waged by Israel and the United States against Iran in June weakened Tehran and its proxies, damaged missile and airstrike capabilities and set back the project to develop a nuclear bomb. By July, Iran was no longer an imminent threat — a conclusion supported by our intelligence agencies.
Nevertheless, without informing the American people, Congress or our allies, President Trump decided to join Israel in a military campaign to kill Iran’s leadership and, he hoped, spark a popular uprising to bring down the Islamic republic once and for all. That did not happen. It was a terrible miscalculation. Since then, the president has offered conflicting objectives for why we went to war.
As former secretaries of defense and former members of Congress, we can personally attest to the problems that arise when our country engages in conflicts that drift without clear objectives and end points. They often become tragic, unwinnable wars that history does not remember kindly.
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