Twice a year the President is required to inform Congress about where U.S. troops are engaged in combat. This seems to leave a lot out – most obviously, naval and air force operations around the world that are nominally based out of the U.S. and its territories. Massive U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere that are not obviously and directly engaged in combat. “Advisors”, special operations, covert actions, intelligence operations, and contractor operations of various kinds. Satellites, somewhat obviously. Nonetheless, the report says U.S. troops are engaged in combat in:

• Iraq and Syria – lumped together, somewhat oddly. U.S. combat troops are on the ground inside Syria, a sovereign nation which has not invited us to be there. They are supposedly fighting Islam-inspired terrorists, but not the ones that just overthrew the country’s government. The U.S. is allied with Kurdish groups, which were fighting the Syrian government (but were not allied with the group that successfully overthrew the Syrian government), and are fighting Turkey, which is a U.S. ally and NATO member. The U.S. directly bombed “Iran-affiliated groups” in Syria twice in November. The short letter does not mention any U.S. support for Israeli operations inside Syria, but it is hard to imagine the U.S. being completely uninvolved. The U.S. still has troops in Iraq (Mission Accomplished) 21 years after invading that country. These troops are supposedly invited to be there by the Iraqi government, and are supporting “Kurdish Iraqi security forces” and providing “limited support to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Iraq”. I am kind of baffled by these last two statements, but I guess I am just ignorant.
• “Arabian Peninsula Region”. This is an anti-terrorist mission supposedly at the invitation of the Yemeni government. At the same time, we are hearing about massive famine in Yemen caused by the Saudi attacks on the country, and it is not exactly clear what the U.S. role in that is.
• Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. U.S. troops are involved in anti-terrorist actions in all these countries, supposedly at the invitation of the host countries.
• Somalia – U.S. troops are involved in anti-terrorist combat operations at the invitation of the government. This one is pretty ugly, but many accounts.
• Djibouti – Djibouti is basically a massive U.S. military base for many operations in Africa and the Middle East. Again, it’s a little odd that this gets mentioned when others don’t – what about Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Qatar?
• Cuba – Guantanamo Bay is still open for business with 30 prisoners. Maybe Biden should just drop these people off in Florida or Texas on January 19.
• Philippines – again, odd that this massive base gets mentioned when other massive ones do not, but it is because there are some in-country operations U.S. troops are involved in.
• Israel – U.S. troops are defending Israel while it is attacking its occupied territories and sovereign neighbors.
• The report mentions small numbers of U.S. troops in Egypt and Kosovo.
• Afghanistan – “United States military personnel remain postured outside Afghanistan to address threats to the United States homeland and United States interests that may arise from inside Afghanistan.” Um, so this does not make it clear where they are, how many troops there are or what they are actually doing, if anything…
• Niger – Well, here is a country that kicked us out following a military coup, and apparently we actually left when they asked us to.
• There are 80,000 U.S. troops deployed to NATO countries in western Europe, according to the letter. Again, it’s a little unclear to me why these are listed while troops in Japan and Korea are not.