In one of her debate answers, Kamala Harris stood with Joe Biden on the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, invoking the tremendous cost and length of the war. Intelligently, I thought, she was trying to take the mantle of peacemaker away from Trump. But then she went on to elaborate and started outright lying. Mike DiMino of Defense Priorities called it out on X. Harris claimed that there is now “not one member of the U.S. military in active-duty in a combat zone — in any war zone around the world — for the first time this century.”
This is not true.
The Department of Defense has an official designation of active war zones, and currently, these include Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya. You may remember that three reservists were killed at a undermanned and poorly defended outpost in Syria earlier this year. We have 2,500 troops in Iraq. Seven of them were hurt in an ISIS raid earlier this year. We have hundreds of troops in Syria. The U.S. Navy has a significant portion of its fleet engaged with Houthi fighters around Yemen. These war zones are official because they determine what kinds of awards, hazard pay, and other benefits our soldiers, sailors, and Marines are eligible to receive.
There is also likely an unofficial war zone designated for Ukraine, in which U.S. soldiers are assisting the Ukrainian army in training and maintenance, if not other matters.
Whatever you feel about the wisdom of these deployments, and I question the utility of most of them, it is outrageous for a would-be commander in chief to leave men and women who are risking their lives unacknowledged.