What Trump’s Iran War is Doing to American Veterans

Will we ever learn the lessons of prior generations?

Credit: U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos

By Former Cpt. Scott Peoples

I grew up as a Republican strongly believing that the Republican Party was the only party that truly supported the military and the veteran community. When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started, I was a teenager and believed that opposing the war meant opposing our troops, and was unpatriotic. I strongly believed that America could spread democracy to the Middle East through regime-change wars.

I joined the UCLA Army ROTC program in 2006, was commissioned as an officer in 2009, and a few months later I arrived at my first unit as a fresh platoon leader in the historic 82nd Airborne Division. Before I arrived, I was just a dumb kid who believed that I was going to be part of the generation that brought peace and democracy to the Middle East. My intentions were good, but I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.

It wasn’t until shortly after I arrived at Fort Bragg in early 2010 that I got a dose of reality: What I was seeing in the news wasn’t actually the reality on the ground. You don’t get to choose where you get stationed or what unit you get assigned to, and it just so happened that I got sent to a unit that had just gotten back home to Fort Bragg after an intense 15-month deployment to Baghdad. I immediately was introduced to the brutal effects of war without ever having seen combat myself.

Not even counting the soldiers who didn’t make it home, or were so badly injured that they needed to be medically discharged from the Army, what I saw up close and personal was the psychological damage and mental torture that war can have on a person who survives without physical injury. I’m not saying this was everyone’s experience with the war, nor am I trying to speak on behalf of the millions of Americans who served during that era. But I am saying what my experience during this period looked, sounded, and felt like. And it wasn’t pretty.

At Fort Bragg, I saw people who I’m told were first-class soldiers before going to Baghdad, and performed admirably in Iraq. Then they came home and became so addicted to drugs that they were stealing gear from the unit and selling it at local pawn shops, so they could feed their addiction. I saw marriages and families torn apart because some soldiers developed anger and rage issues that they could not control or overcome. And I saw soldiers become suicidal and threaten to take their own lives.

It was a helpless feeling, not being able to get them back on the right paths. Again, I’m not suggesting that this experience is universal. People who served during that era came from all over the country, representing every possible background, and every one of them who saw combat dealt with it in their own unique, imperfect way. Some people have a relatively smooth re-acclimation process upon returning home. Others struggle mightily. Those are the stories that stick with me most vividly.

I say all of this to counteract the current messaging that is coming out of this administration about the war in Iran. What we are seeing is another administration that is leading our country into yet another foreign conflict based on lies, with no clear objective, and with apparently no exit strategy. We are seeing the administration’s communications team put out videos trying to glorify war as some kind of fun video game that we should all be excited to play. This is all absolutely disgusting optics, because America’s brave sons and daughters deserve the best leadership from the civilian side of the command structure, and they are not getting that right now. Not even close.

Cpt. Peoples speaking at this weekend’s historic No Kings protest / Credit: the author

It should be the hardest decision in the world for a president to send troops into harm’s way. Ninety years ago, on the eve of World War II, President Roosevelt spoke of the anguish a president feels about the deadly serious decision to send young Americans to die at war, or to return home irrevocably changed by it:

“I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

Every single life lost, whether it is an American soldier or an Iranian civilian, should keep our commander in chief up at night. It clearly does not. In response to news of the deaths of American service members, Trump recently said, “That’s the way it is.”

One of the worst parts about this war is that Trump blatantly lied to the American people. He campaigned on keeping America out of these endless wars. He said he had learned the lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and that America was done with these wars of choice, and instead we would invest money here at home, not abroad. Then he did the opposite, and we are now spending $1 billion dollars a day fighting in Iran.

We have economic, education, affordability, and health care crises here at home that we are told we can’t afford to solve because of our growing debt. But when it comes to dropping bombs, we seem to have an endless supply of cash. America does not currently have a resources problem; America has a values problem. Do not tell me that a political party that prioritizes sending troops to unnecessary wars of choice over fully funding and staffing VA medical facilities here in America is the party that best supports the troops, because it is a damn lie. We should be prioritizing the mental health of our veterans above all else, because a country that fails to fully take care of its veterans after they return home from war is not a country that we can truly be proud of.

We as a country seem incapable of learning from the mistakes of our past. The forces of money, power, ego, and greed seem to always take over common sense, or what is just and right. It seems to be an endless cycle with every new generation. The Boomers fought in their war in Vietnam, Gen X and Millennials got their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now it looks like Gen Z will get their war in Iran. Why does every generation of Americans have to go fight and die in a war? Will we ever break this cycle? Will we ever learn?

It starts by having leaders of true character who care about the wellbeing of the nation, not simply themselves.

Scott Peoples served as a captain in the US 82nd Airborne Division during the global war on terror. He now advocates for free and fair elections in North Carolina and is the Executive Director of Veterans for Responsible Leadership.