Trump administration rolls out the ‘Operation Backfire’

If a real-life “Beetle Bailey” — the Mort Walker comic strip soldier who’s a perpetual grumbler and questioner of authority in the US military — were to mutter a cynical assessment of what’s happened in the days since the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, he might be tempted to call it “Operation Backfire.”
The big shots, led by President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have been talking tough about the resolute move they’ve made; meanwhile, the troops are hunkered down waiting for the rockets to land — and watching much of what they’ve been fighting for slip away into the swamp of abandoned military missions.
“Force protection” — meaning keeping our own troops safe from enemy fire — is the new order of the day following the killing of Soleimani, rather than training partners or fighting terrorist enemies. The military is devoting so many surveillance drones to watching for threats to US personnel that it doesn’t have many left for other missions, such as pursuing the still-dangerous IS.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the Pentagon was “repositioning” troops, but he said the United States hadn’t made any decision to leave Iraq, rebutting a report earlier that had cited a draft letter that US forces in Iraq would “prepare for onward movement.” At Beetle’s base at Camp Swampy, folks are scratching their heads.
Officials fear that the Iranians, through proxies, may launch multiple reprisal attacks across the region, on a half-dozen or more US military targets. The thousands of troops who are being sent into the region are mostly to help protect (and perhaps evacuate) the ones already there.
Pompeo dismissed possible Iranian reprisals as “a little noise here in the interim.” Trump said of possible retaliation: “If it happens, it happens.” How would that sound to Beetle? Not so good, I suspect.
The stand-down message was sent by Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon task force that’s overseeing operations against the remnants of the IS in Iraq.
The statement notes that because of recent rocket attacks by an Iranian-backed militia called Kataib Hezbollah that killed Iraqi troops and a US civilian, “we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host Coalition troops. This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against [the IS] and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review.”
The same problem exists for US soldiers training the Lebanese Armed Forces. They’re targets for retaliation by Iranian proxies now. Should they “pause,” too?
America’s relationship with Iraq also looks like another casualty. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi had been trying to get a little distance from his Iranian neighbours and work more closely with Washington, up until a week ago. But, after the Soleimani attack, he backed a law calling for “cancelling” the alliance with the US military and to “end the presence of any foreign forces in Iraqi territory” — i.e., US forces.
The legislation wasn’t binding, so there was a little wiggle room, but Trump further humiliated Abdul Mahdi by threatening him with “sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever.”
This unravelling of US military operations and partnerships didn’t have to happen, says Beetle, down in his foxhole. He’s read on the Internet that Abdul Mahdi told parliament that on the day Soleimani was killed at Baghdad airport, the general planned to visit the prime minister to deliver a response to a Saudi deescalation proposal. Wait a minute, says Beetle. Was that the “imminent” threat Pompeo was talking about? A meeting with a prime minister? Maybe the real intelligence is so sensitive and highly classified that it can’t be shared with the grunts, but Beetle has heard that before.
The last thing that bothers Beetle, as he’s waiting for the shooting to start, is how the Iraqis he’s been mentoring seem genuinely angry with the United States. He’s read that the Shiite leadership in Najaf, Iraq, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was encouraging protesters who burned the Iranian consulate in Najaf just two months ago.
But now he reads that Mohammed Redha Sistani, the Ayatollah’s son and closest adviser, escorted Soleimani’s body to the airport in Najaf for its flight to Tehran. Ammar al-Hakim, a member of a prominent Shiite clerical family that supported the United States before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, also joined the funeral procession. That sure sounds like a plan that backfired.
But what does Beetle know? He’s just a soldier. The big shots know best.

—The Washington Post

David Ignatius is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post