After Iraq Attack on U.S. Troops, ‘We Ought to Send a Signal Loud and Clear Immediately’

It had been four months since U.S. troops were targeted in Iraq and Syria, but a pair of rockets screaming toward the sprawling Al Asad Air Base changed that Monday. Five servicemembers and two contractors were injured in the explosion, including a pair who were airlifted for urgent care. While the Defense Department insists the victims are all in stable condition, top military officials warn that this is a “dangerous escalation” in tensions threatening to spill over into an all-out war.

For Americans, who’d been targeted more than 175 times between the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel and January, this week’s attacks weren’t entirely unexpected. After Israel’s assassination of top Hamas and Hezbollah officials, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was bracing for retaliation. In talks with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, Austin “agreed that [the] Iran-aligned militia attack on U.S. forces … demonstrated Iran’s destabilizing role in the region.”

It also, Republicans warn, points to the glaring weakness projected by this White House on the world stage. When Donald Trump was in office, Texas Rep. Randy Weber (R) insisted on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, our enemies feared the United States. He pointed back to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of the deadliest terrorists in the Middle East. Trump “took him out with a missile strike.” “And Mark Theissen was on Fox News several months ago,” Weber recalled, and said that the Trump administration “had sent a message [in] backchannels to Iran saying, that ‘if y’all retaliate over this, the next missile strike you see will be in Tehran.’ So I think if we had Trump in office, we’d been [in] a lot better shape.”

Instead, while seven Americans lie wounded, this White House condemns the attack but stops short of exacting any sort of consequence. “Our hearts go out to the servicemembers who were injured,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said before adding, “We will respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing.”

More than 80 troops were hurt before the president bothered to respond this past spring, Weber pointed out. “[There have been about] 100 times that they’ve attacked some of our bases somewhere before the Biden administration finally did something. I think what we should do is anytime there’s one of those missile strikes or attacks, we ought to obliterate the ground. Choose a number in a five-mile radius, wherever it came from, or 10-mile radius, [and] if we’ve got satellite vision … up there, we ought to follow these assailants, these terrorists, these murderers, and we ought to literally wipe them off the face of the earth every single time — not just, ‘Oh, you know, we’ll get there if it happens again.’ …We ought to send the signal loud and clear immediately, if not sooner.”

“Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice agreed, insisting, “That part of the world only understands strength. And when they sense weakness, they’re all over it. And much of what’s happening right now, literally around the world … but particularly right here in the Middle East, is because of weakness from our current administration, they just don’t believe there’s going to be any consequences for them doing whatever they want to do.”

But it’s not just the president, Weber argued — it’s the president’s party too. “The Democrats are fueling this fire,” the Texan warned. “I mean, it’s unbelievable when [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu came to address the joint meeting of Congress, [and] it depends on what numbers you want to use — [but] some estimates [are] as high as 100 congressional Democrats [who] boycotted that meeting. And as you know, the vice president was not even at that meeting. She had something more important to do. So what they’re doing is they’re sending a signal to the rest of the world — and to Israel, by the way — that they no longer feel it’s important to be part of Israel’s defense and be a good ally and a good partner with Israel. And to me, that’s scary.”

Almost as scary as the news that the Biden-Harris administration accidentally gave $239 million dollars of taxpayer money to the Taliban. After the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, a report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says that America “mistakenly” wired more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Afghan groups tied to terrorists. “Two bureaus in the U.S. State Department failed to track” the humanitarian aid delivered to the country, “meaning the funds could have ended up supporting the Taliban terrorist groups,” the audit explained. In other words, taxpayers — against their will — sent cash to terrorists to support their mission, all because of the carelessness of this White House.

“Well, and not only that,” Weber pointed out, “but you recall we left them … somewhere near $80 billion dollars of equipment, of weapons, of vehicles, of all kinds of things that the Taliban can use. And you’re right, the only thing they understand is force. I’m proud of Israel for taking out Hezbollah leaders. … I’m glad they’re doing it in Tehran, quite frankly. I’m glad that they’re doing it all over. [I] just want them to keep taking them out.”

In the meantime, fellow Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R) says, Americans should be enraged at this mismanagement. “It is infuriating,” he fumed on “Washington Watch” Monday, because the president’s team didn’t bother “to follow its own established procedures for vetting individuals and entities that were receiving these funds that were intended to go overseas. And because they did not follow those procedures as they had written them out, then the vetting process failed, and this money ended up in the [wrong] hands. And it’s shameful when you see that happen, especially when we turned our back on people that have helped us over in Afghanistan and other areas in the world. We’ve turned our back on them, our allies. And now here it is — unintentionally, we’re helping people through our own negligence, and that’s simply infuriating.”

Worse, he reiterated, it’s their feebleness on the world stage that’s emboldening these terrorists. “We saw it start in the Afghanistan withdrawal. We saw it continued with the way that the administration did not respond properly to the [spy balloon] and to so many other foreign and military advances across the world by totalitarian regimes. Every one of them knows they can do what they want to do without severe consequences.” The U.S., he argues, has to catch up “to the understanding that the only way you’re going to get peace, stability, and prosperity in that region … is by acts of strength, and we have not shown that so far.”