The United States will keep F-16 fighter jets and Patriot anti-missile weapons in Jordan after a joint military exercise ends this month, a US defense official said Thursday.AKA "USS Queerbarge".
The US administration, which is weighing a decision to arm rebels fighting in neighboring Syria’s civil war, also planned to keep a unit of US Marines on amphibious ships off the coast after consultations with Jordanian leaders, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The warplanes, anti-missile systems and warships had been sent to Jordan for a major exercise, dubbed Eager Lion, but officials decided to keep the troops and weapons in place on the request of Jordan, which is anxious about a spillover of violence and a growing influx of refugees from the conflict.
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The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (website) taking part in the drill consists of about 2,400 troops, which arrived in a group of three amphibious ships, including the USS Kearsarge.
I'm down with this. King Abdullah is our only Arab friend in the Middle East. Jordan is small and not particularly wealthy, and with all the Syrian refugees and being next to Israel, he's between a rock and a hard place. He and Jordan are worth helping.
3 comments:
I like Jordan too. My problem is that the number of countries US troops have left once they settled in since the end of WW II can be counted on two fingers.
I can think of more than that but I had to think about it.
Jordon's biggest problem is that while they've maintained cordial relationships with Israel since 1968 and do have a peace treaty with Israel unlike Syria (which has been officially at war with Israel for the past 50 years, with just a truce, not a treaty), the current Israeli regime is not near as willing to help their neighbor as the Israeli regime in 1970 that bombed a column of Syrian armor that had crossed the border to assist the PLO in overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy. So asking a few thousand Maroons to bob around the sea is an act of desperation but one that is pretty much a no-brainer, they need all the help they can get if the Syrian Civil War spills over the border.
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