The deaths of four U.S. servicemen in Niger last month took members of Congress by surprise. Most didn't even know U.S. troops were in the West African nation. Among the repercussions of the battle are new calls on Capitol Hill for an update to the war-powers resolution passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

An update absolutely is overdue. But that doesn't mean America should consider withdrawing its forces from overseas combat zones just because they're dangerous places.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is calling for Congress to scrap the Authorization for Use of Military Force, granted after 9/11 and again before the 2003 Iraq War. Even hawks like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, believe the AUMF is outdated.

The hard reality of life in the post-9/11 world is that radical Islamic groups are trying to expand their reach, mainly by preying on the Muslim world's most vulnerable and unstable nations. If no one challenges them, the result will be another bloody and oppressive "caliphate" like the one the Islamic State group declared in Iraq and Syria. That's why the president needs authority to deploy forces wherever these threats arise.

Three days after 9/11, Congress passed the authorization to target Al-Qaida and those who supported it. A separate 2002 authorization for the Iraq War is where Congress and then-President George W. Bush went astray. Al-Qaida posed no threat in Iraq at the time, and the Islamic State group didn't exist. Now both have splintered and spread across the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Paul believes that it's not America's job to police the world. "I don't think that anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty believes that these authorizations from 16 years ago and 14 years ago ... authorized war in seven different countries," Paul stated in September during his most recent attempt to rescind the 2001 authorization. "I am advocating a vote ... on whether or not we should be at war."

It would be shortsighted to revoke the president's deployment authority simply for fear of getting into another open-ended commitment like Iraq. Military forces in countries like Chad, Niger and Afghanistan need support and training before taking on their own counterinsurgency operations.

That is why an estimated 800 U.S. special operations troops are deployed in Niger. These deployments aren't something President Donald Trump cooked up. The strategy was announced by the Obama administration specifically to meet such threats early on, before they become full-blown insurgencies. By the end of 2015, special operations forces were deployed in 85 countries.

There's no question that Congress needs to be in the loop. Legislative mechanisms should be in place to ensure that a deadly entanglement like Niger doesn't suck the United States into another full-blown war. Congress should proceed, cautiously.

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