We don’t need these undermanned bases in the Middle East to project power there.

So says a smart editorial in the Washington Post:

Look closely, and you’ll notice something peculiar: Many of the aircraft involved in the operation do not appear to have taken off from the large U.S. air bases in the Middle East — or, if they did, that fact has been carefully concealed. Whether this reflects a choice made to spare gulf state partners’ ties with Iran or because these states denied the United States permission to use bases on their territory, the implication is the same. When the president decided it was time for the United States to act against Iran, the 40,000 troops and billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware that Washington keeps parked in the Middle East were of limited use.

Indeed. We’ve had reservists killed in these tiny foreign outposts. They aren’t adequately defended from danger. It’s as if we’re hanging targets out over there so that we spare terrorists the trouble of plotting over here. With Israel having established air dominance over Iran and having flummoxed her proxies, a pivot to Asia sounds like the right course, and that means pulling up stakes from Iraq.