Our presence in the middle east is a losing proposition......we will never influence their politics or religion.Having spent a career in the Air Force, I’ll be the first to tell you air power can’t hold ground. The only way to control land space is with land forces.
Even if air power turns every single square inch of land into pulverized dust, the moment air power is no long present, the land space is open for grabs.
Foreign policy in the Middle East isn’t difficult to understand...for the past 1500 years, mostly nomadic tribes have fought one another over resources, religion, and reputation; about 100 years ago Europeans put lines on a map to represent borders, ensuring those lines captured a significant opposing minority for various political reasons. That’s also about the same time the peoples in that area began the march from pre-industrial societies to post-industrial societies.