A U.S. Air Force security forces raven, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, maintain a security cordon around a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), Afghanistan, Aug. 24, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen) The U.S. military’s relationship with the Middle East, has, and always will be, complicated. This comes as a familiar paradox: deploying forces to counter