Deployment Comes as US Cases in
Both Countries Are Coming Under Attack
Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
(August 12, 2024) — The Oregon National Guard is sending off 230 guardsmen to Iraq and Syria amid soaring tensions in the Middle East as the US is pledging to defend Israel from an expected Iranian reprisal attack.
The US has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 troops occupying eastern Syria. The Oregon guardsmen are likely being sent out on a regular rotational deployment, but the move comes as the US beefs up its presence in the region.
According to KGW8, a local NBC affiliate in Oregon, the unit is being deployed for a year and will serve as “primary artillery defenders” for the US and its partners in Iraq and Syria. The soldiers held a mobilization ceremony on Friday and were sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to undergo training before the deployment.
The US frequently deploys the National Guard to active conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. A national movement in the US is seeking to remove the federal government’s ability to deploy the National Guard to war zones through legislation at the state level, known as the Defend the Guard Act.
The Defend the Guard Act would prohibit the federal government from deploying a state’s National Guard to a conflict zone where Congress hasn’t officially declared war, which hasn’t happened since World War II. The bill has passed through several state legislatures but has yet to become law.
Visit Defendtheguard.us to see if the Defend the Guard Act has been introduced in your state. Click here to volunteer for phone banking to help get the legislation passed in states where it has been introduced.
The Oregon National Guard soldiers will be deployed under the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, known as Operation Inherent Resolve. ISIS doesn’t hold significant territory in Iraq and Syria, but there’s been a resurgence of ISIS attacks amid tensions and other escalations in the region.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria this year. In July, US Central Command said that it had participated in 196 missions against ISIS with partner forces in Iraq and Syria, which killed 44 suspected ISIS operatives.
But the US has also been engaged in battle with Iraqi Shia militias that fall under the Popular Mobilization Forces, who are sworn enemies of ISIS and are part of Iraq’s security forces. From October 2023 to February of this year, the militias launched hundreds of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria in response to US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
The attacks culminated in the killing of three US Army Reserve troops at Tower 22, a secretive US base in Jordan. Forty-one members of the Arizona National Guard were also wounded. Iran and the Iraqi government pressured the militias to stop the attacks, and there was a lull until recently. In the past week, several US troops have been injured in rocket and drone attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria.
