“So, look, I think that we ought to get out of the Middle East. I don’t think we should have troops in the Middle East. But we have to do it the right way, the smart way,” Warren said at Tuesday’s Democratic debate. “We need to get out, but we need to do this through a negotiated solution. There is no military solution in this region.”…

The spin was worse than the gaffe. Does Warren (or the Warren campaign) not know that the United States’ Al Udeid base in Qatar flies “combat” missions fighting terrorists, including in Iraq and Syria, all the time? What is a “non-combat base” anyway? Are the U.S. bases in Iraq, to which our troops in Syria are now withdrawing, combat bases? Does Warren want to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq? The campaign declined to answer any of these questions.

What about the larger questions begged by Warren’s position on the Middle East? How is the United States supposed to leave the Middle East “the right way, the smart way,” without increasing the security risks at home? Since diplomacy and negotiations are not going to work with terrorists, how does Warren propose to deal with that, absent troop deployments? Again, the campaign declined to answer.