Rep. Biggs wants president to pull troops from Middle East

Two Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives cosigned a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to withdraw U.S. military from Afghanistan and Iraq and “end the endless wars.”

In a July 7 letter, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. and chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., urged the president to bring remaining troops home after two decades of military presence in the Middle East.

“Throughout your entire Presidency, you have worked tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” Biggs and Massie said in the letter. “We are confident you will repeat this feat again after this pandemic. However, the United States will not remain a great power for long if we stay engaged in perpetual warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The Trump administration is exploring options for pulling troops out of Afghanistan before the presidential election in November, according to the New York Times.

The United States signed an agreement with the Taliban in February agreeing that if the group met certain conditions — including severing ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations — troops would leave the country within 12 to 14 months.

Although the exact number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is unclear, the Associated Press reported in March that the U.S. would begin reducing troops from Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600 over a four-and-ahalf month period. The AP reported in March that 5,000 U.S. forces were stationed in Iraq.

“President Trump campaigned on ending our wars in the Middle East, and we want to help him meet that campaign promise,” Biggs said in a written statement to The Arizona Republic. “Polling also shows that veterans and military families overwhelmingly support withdrawing our brave men and women in uniform from Afghanistan. This has been a priority of mine since my election to Congress, and I will continue to do everything I can to end our endless wars.”

In the letter, Biggs and Massie say that Afghanistan and Iraq do not have weapons that are able to reach the continental U.S. and “neither nation is vital to the national security of the United States.”

They also say American lives should not be lost in further conflict there. “Finally, neither nation is worth one more Gold Star family. The American people have paid dearly in both blood and treasure for past mistakes,” Biggs and Massie wrote.

Alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., Biggs established the bipartisan War Powers Caucus last year aimed at ending involvement in “vaguely defined, openended conflicts” and “rebalancing our nation’s focus and resources away from wars overseas and instead investing in America,” according to the group’s mission statement.

The War Powers Caucus aims to assess the cost and benefit of military operations abroad, prioritize diplomacy over force during international challenges, and “reclaim Congress’s Article I war powers,” according to the mission statement.

Rep. Ken Buck, RColo., and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., also lead the caucus.