No, America doesn't fight wars for Israel—and it never has
Altogether, there are around a quarter of a million U.S. troops serving overseas in some 750 bases in 80-plus countries. None of those countries is Israel.
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You may have heard this slogan from TikTok pundits: "No U.S. wars for Israel." That's one of the top messages Qatar's online influence army promotes.
But is it true? When was the last time American troops joined Israel in a war? When was the last time Israel asked for American troops? How many military bases does the U.S. maintain in Israel? Do you know how many U.S. troops are stationed in Israel to protect it?
In fact, the U.S. has never had a military base in Israel. There are no barracks with thousands of U.S. troops. Thirty years ago, the U.S. stationed a handful of experts in Israel to help operate Patriot missiles for a few months, and they did the same again recently. But those are temporary exceptions to the rule: there is no American base in Israel. There never has been.
Compare that to Arab and Muslim countries in the region—including several dictatorships that are hostile to America, and even aid terrorists. Start with the worst: Qatar itself.
The U.S. built the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar thirty years ago. It now has 10,000 U.S. troops and 100 U.S. aircraft based there. For some reason, U.S. taxpayers spend $10 to $12 billion every year operating the base, which defends Qatar. This is understandable, given that Qatar's government would likely fall within months if it weren’t propped up by a foreign power. Qatar is an authoritarian dictatorship. The last "emir" became the dictator by staging a coup against his own father.
Qatar has three million people in it, but only 300,000 are citizens—the rest are temporary foreign workers or servants, with no civil rights. If they didn't have oil money, they would be an empty patch of sand in the desert that no one would care about. But due to geology and dumb luck, they’re staggeringly wealthy. And they've taken that money and poured it into terrorist groups like Hamas, propaganda outlets like Al Jazeera, and influence operations in the West, becoming by far the top donor to U.S. universities. Plus, they have a wise strategy of hiring hundreds of influencers around Trump.
Back to Americans going to war for Arabs: over time, that one U.S. base in Qatar has cost U.S. taxpayers $35 billion, including construction and upgrades—not even including the cost of the men and the operations. Why are American taxpayers paying to prop up a royal family of depraved billionaire layabouts? Why are American soldiers putting their lives on the line for some desert royal family?
There's a tiny chance it might have to do with Qatar sitting on top of so much oil and gas. Maybe the U.S. government thinks American soldiers should be there instead of Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers, or Iranian soldiers. Maybe the U.S. likes having a forward staging area for other wars. Those could all be legitimate reasons—that’s for Americans to decide.
The same thing goes for three U.S. bases in Kuwait, for their royal family, and two bases in Iraq. The U.S. even has a base in Turkey, where nuclear weapons are reportedly kept. Turkey is so authoritarian, it's hard to understand why it's a part of NATO—other than what Lyndon Johnson used to say: "Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
And if you want to talk about costing American taxpayers and needlessly wasting American lives, don't even start on the disastrous venture into Afghanistan—that's measured in the trillions of dollars, and thousands of lost lives.
Overall, there are at least a dozen U.S. bases in the Middle East, all in Muslim countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There’s even a small base with a couple of hundred Americans operating in Syria. In rough numbers, the U.S. has spent $200 billion building up its network of military bases in Muslim countries. The U.S. Navy alone spends $50 billion patrolling the Persian Gulf sea lanes—obviously to protect the oil trade.
The point is: none of this has anything to do with Israel or the Jews. Tens of thousands of brave American military servicemen are taken away from their homes and their loved ones, put into the heart of some of the worst places in the world, on standing orders to fight and die for countries that show little allegiance to America, and that few Americans could find on the map—and none of them are named Israel.
By the way, it’s not just the Muslims. Why does America still have 40 military bases in Germany, with 50,000 troops there? Why are there even more in Japan, in dozens of bases there too? And 25,000 in South Korea, acting as a tripwire in case Kim Jong Un tries to invade. If that were to happen, Americans would be among the first to be killed.
Unlike Qatar, Germany, Japan, and Korea are real countries, with some of the world’s strongest economies. Why is American blood and treasure sent over to protect them? Why does America never seem to leave a country after a war?
Altogether, there are around a quarter of a million U.S. troops serving overseas in some 750 bases in 80-plus countries. But none of those countries is Israel.
Whether this is all a good idea is for Americans to decide—it’s their men and their money.
Personally, we think there are good answers to all of these questions. These bases project American force around the world, protecting American commerce and access to resources. They’re staging areas for the U.S. to react anywhere, quickly. Again, if it’s not America filling the void, it would probably be China — just look in Africa, where the U.S. doesn’t have the same presence.
Let’s go through America’s recent wars, and again, per the anti-Israel Twitter brigades, you explain which of these was “for Israel.”
Let’s start with the Second World War. Hitler invaded Europe in September 1939 and started killing the Jews. But America didn’t join the war until Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941. It wasn’t about the Jews.
Then came the Korean War and the Vietnam War — America trying to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Same thing in Grenada and Panama, and the reason behind the Cuban missile embargo, too.
After the Cold War was over, almost all of America’s wars were about Muslims, not Jews. Think of the Gulf War: Arabs in Iraq invaded Arabs in Kuwait, and for some reason, America sent 700,000 troops to sort that out. Hundreds died — for Kuwait, or for oil, but not for the Jews.
Then came the Somalian civil war, the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the war against ISIS, the war in Libya, and the war in Yemen. Do you see a theme here? None of those wars had anything to do with Israel.
Israel has its own wars: against the PLO in Lebanon, against the Intifada, and defending against various Arab countries in 1973 and 1967. Israel has had no shortage of wars, but American troops fought in none of them.
It is true that Israel gets $3 billion every year in military aid from the U.S. But it’s a fraction of what Qatar and Kuwait and Iraq, and the rest of them get — and again, no Americans are at risk.
There’s a strong argument to be made that Israel should say thanks but no thanks to American funding altogether. Israel’s military budget is more than $30 billion a year. The extra 10 per cent is nice, but it’s not necessary. It’s a trap: with money comes control.
All of this to demonstrate that despite what some know-nothings on the internet say, Americans have never fought an Israel war, Americans are not stationed in Israel, and American military aid to Israel is a fraction of what America spends on military bases in some very rich countries across the Middle East, and around the world.
Contrary to the Qatar-financed Twitter brigade, Israel didn’t drag America into World War III, or any other war. Israel and America worked together to take nuclear weapons out of the hands of a global death cult dictatorship, and left not only the region, but the whole world, safer for it—including the 15 countries Iran has attacked before. There are already reports out there about a second wave of "Abraham Accords"—the Trump peace treaty between Israel and its Muslim neighbours that Hamas’s terror attack was designed to stop.
So the next time someone complains about U.S.–Israel cooperation, ask the obvious question: why are they only talking about the Jews, and not the twelve Muslim Middle Eastern countries where the U.S. spends far more militarily and gets much less in return?
You might have to wait until they check with their Qatari funders for the answer.
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COMMENTS
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Robert Pariseau commented 2025-06-30 21:42:36 -0400Trust me, Putin wants reason. But he knows full damn well that he’s dealing with an enemy that is immune to any concept of reason.
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Paul McCullough commented 2025-06-30 21:29:52 -0400America’s involvement in Israel’s wars has mostly been in the are of supplying military supplies. If the US cut off all aid to the middle east, Israel would come out ahead overall. The ideal of a Palestinian people was invented in Moscow. After the Arab world ganged up on Israel and got their a***s kicked, Israel gained popularity on the world stage. Creating Palestinians = creating victims for the world’s media.
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Bruce Atchison commented 2025-06-30 20:41:36 -0400There are three periods in history where Islam was at war with everybody else. It formed in war, then there was a seven-century gap between when the second wave of jihad was fought. Today is the third wave of violence from Islam. Apart from biblical times, Jews were never a problem. Ezra proved just how much of a problem Islam has been throughout its history.
I’m glad there is a method to Trump’s apparent madness. I hope he can bring about peace in the Middle East and make Putin see reason.
