On Feb. 28, Iranian missiles and one-way attack drones rained down on food, fuel and ship repair depots at the base. High-tech command facilities were demolished. Living quarters were deemed virtually uninhabitable. No deaths were reported, but roughly 1,500 service members and family members were evacuated, leaving behind their vehicles, pets and belongings.
Nearly seven months later, the base that the military once called the busiest 152 acres in the world remains effectively off limits to nonessential personnel. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, told one displaced sailor during an Aug. 31 global town hall held from Fort Meade in Maryland. “I just want to be completely honest with that.”
It’s not just Bahrain. American bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan have been damaged by Iranian drone and missile strikes. . . . The bloodshed and destruction, a harbinger of America’s future fights, show the need for a long-overdue correction: The Pentagon must revamp how it positions its troops and equipment amid the proliferation of low-cost drones and precision missiles by America’s enemies.
Despite such widespread and severe damage, information on the scale of the damage has come not from the Felon's regime but rather satellite imaging and photos anonymously submitted by service members seeking to get the public to understand the magnitude of the mess the Felon and Hegseth have created. That piece also notes that with the rise of drone warfare, America may need to rethink its approach to bases and technology. A second piece in the Times looks at the regime's attempts at covering up it self-created debacle:
On Sept. 15, CBS News published a truly meaningful scoop. It obtained pictures of the extraordinary damage done to American aircraft and American bases by Iranian drones and missiles.
The photographs were astonishing. During my own deployment, I spent many days at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, and now parts of that sprawling base are in ruins. Places I recognized have been blown to pieces. And it’s particularly jolting to see the destroyed remains of American aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
It’s an image that would have been unthinkable during the previous phases of our long war on terror.
While we’ve undoubtedly inflicted tremendous damage on Iran’s conventional military (its air force and navy barely exist, for example), the war has not been as one-sided as the administration has claimed. This was not supposed to happen because we are not supposed to be that vulnerable.
I strongly recommend reading my colleague W.J. Hennigan’s piece on the military impact of Iran’s attacks to better understand how much Iran has exposed American military weakness — a weakness that’s based on perhaps an outdated understanding of the nature of modern war.
I’m wanting, however, to talk about something else — something revealed in the second paragraph of the CBS story: “The images were sent to CBS News by active service members on condition of anonymity because of rigid media restrictions within the military.”
As one deployed service member told CBS News: “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.” The fact that these pictures were leaked by active service members is significant — more significant than many readers might realize.
First, it’s important to note a few things. The Trump administration has waged this war differently from the patterns established by previous presidents. Not only did it attack Iran without any real public debate, without congressional authorization and without a U.N. Security Council resolution, it went to war in the midst of a campaign against the media unlike anything we’ve seen in recent American history.
As The Columbia Journalism Review reported this past summer, “Press conferences are rare. Pete Hegseth, the so-called secretary of war, takes questions only from friendly outlets. No mainstream news organizations have reporters embedded with U.S. military units in the Middle East. Pentagon sources are increasingly reluctant to talk to journalists for fear of retaliation from the administration.”
As a result, during the opening weeks of the war, Americans were robbed of any way of assessing its progress apart from the dueling news releases and statements from the two combatants. And given the administration’s propensity to lie, we had no way of discerning the course of combat.
The fog of war is always thick, and it’s made thicker by the need for secrecy to disguise combat operations. In this conflict, however, we’ve seen a level of secrecy, deception and outright propaganda that has made knowing the truth virtually impossible — until, at long last, the combination of leaks and commercial satellite photos made it impossible for the administration to maintain its spin.
Americans who were dissatisfied with government news releases and Hegseth’s boasts were reduced to chasing rumors and watching snippets of video on social media. You’d see clips and wonder: Is our naval base in Bahrain on fire? Did Iran destroy a number of American planes on the ground? Are its missiles and drones really getting through? And why is it continuing to fire so many missiles and launch so many drones if our military efforts have been so successful?
An administration that violated the Constitution and evaded democratic accountability in launching the war was now evading democratic accountability for its conduct of the war. Even if you support military action against Iran, it’s hard to argue that either its decision to start the war without Congress or its extreme deception and secrecy has benefited the war effort.
It’s a simple matter of common sense — and something that President Trump may soon learn this November — that beginning a war without public support (much less conducting it behind a veil of secrecy and lies) makes it much less likely that the nation will possess the will to prevail.
But Hegseth’s secrecy betrays a bigger problem — he’s breaking faith with the men and women who’ve volunteered to serve. By robbing them of the ability to tell their stories to the nation and the world, he’s not just silencing them, he’s further separating the military from the civilian population it serves.
The good reporters want to report the truth, and — crucially — good soldiers want the public to know the truth. In fact, it matters a great deal to them that other people know the truth and know their stories.
To hear Pete Hegseth describe the ideal soldier, you’d think of a special forces operator (think of a SEAL or member of Delta Force) in a MAGA hat. He’s a “high-T” bearded man who’s wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt that’s a size too small, all the better to show off his ink and his biceps. And this guy absolutely hates the media. To him, it’s weak and woke.
There are certainly people like that in the military, but in my experience they’re a minority even in the special forces community. . . . . And as citizens we need to hear soldiers’ stories. We need to know, as much as possible, what it is like to be on a patrol, wondering if and when the next blast is going to come. Or what it’s like to be under missile fire, hoping and praying that the interceptors can hit their marks or that the bunkers are strong enough to withstand a direct hit.
I am concerned that one side effect of the 25-year war on terror is the further creation of a warrior class of Americans, people who live largely separate from the rest of us, increasingly as disconnected from civilian life as civilians are from the military experience.
The side effect of this separation is that — for all the respect and honor we give them — we’re not cognizant of their sacrifices because we simply can’t grasp their experience.
That’s why good reporters matter, not simply because they can tell us the truth about military campaigns free from government propaganda but also because they connect soldiers and civilians. They allow us to understand one another. And when Hegseth cuts off soldiers from reporters, he isn’t just silencing reporters, he’s silencing soldiers. He’s suppressing the stories of the most meaningful and dangerous and traumatic moments of their lives.
[A]s we watch Trump flounder and fail, the flaws of rule by decree are obvious. He has no lasting legislative legacy. Many of his most important policy priorities are the legal equivalent of vaporware — they’ll be repealed the instant a new president is in office.
His war is floundering and failing as well, at least in part precisely because he skipped the constitutional process (the war would be difficult under any circumstances; Trump made it more difficult). A disgruntled nation (and disgruntled allies) are unwilling to bear the burden of a fight they didn’t ask for and that was imposed on them without their consent.
When I saw that CBS report, I heard the voices of men and women in uniform who wanted their stories known. They wanted us to see and know what they’ve endured, even if it doesn’t reflect well on the administration that sent them to war, or even on themselves.
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