'Betrayal of the promise of our founding': Veteran blasts Trump's Iran war as un-American

President Donald Trump and his top officials seem to glory in the violence they inflict as leaders of the American military-industrial complex — and a Marine Corps veteran claims this behavior is fundamentally un-American.

“I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level,” wrote Phil Klay, a novelist and Marine Corps veteran from President George W. Bush’s Iraq War, in a Sunday editorial for The New York Times. “But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran?”

Describing the Trump administration’s myriad and oft-contradictory explanations as “stunningly incoherent,” Klay explained that servicemembers have no idea if the war is being fought to change the Iranian regime, destroy its nuclear program, degrade their other sophisticated weapons capabilities, help Israel survive or simply engage in an “excursion that will keep us out of a war.”

“In President Trump’s America, there may be only two genders, but our military adventures can identify however they please,” Klay observed regarding the Trump administration’s innumerable explanatory transitions. At the same time, he also picked up on a theme in Trump’s warmongering that does not receive as much attention — the desire to declare war for its own sake.

“The bowling video is one of many sizzle reels posted on White House social media accounts celebrating the war by mixing images of death and destruction with footage from video games or sports highlights,” Klay wrote. “The president declared that military officials told him ‘it’s more fun to sink’ ships than to capture them, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exulted, ‘We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.’ The Trump aide Stephen Miller proclaimed that the Iran war showcased a military ‘that isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.’ At another news conference, Mr. Hegseth made the macho posturing even clearer: ‘No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.’”

Klay contrasted this cavalier attitude toward war with the ideals on which America was founded. Although he analyzed presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Bush Jr. himself, the words of America’s first president and most iconic military leader were the most directly relevant to his thesis.

“In his addresses to the troops, George Washington would bring up the imagery of violence not as a spectacle to be enjoyed but as horrors to be endured — from ‘mercenary hirelings fighting in the cause of lawless ambition, rapine and devastation’ to those who wished to keep revolutionary America in ‘bondage and misery,’” Klay wrote. “And when news of British atrocities reached him, Washington wrote that ‘their wanton cruelty injures rather than benefits their cause; that, with our forbearance, justly secures to us the attachment of all good men.’”

Writing for Salon Magazine in 2021, this journalist explained that Washington also would have abhorred Trump’s refusal to concede after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, as Washington prioritized the peaceful transfer of power and abhorred the partisanship Trump tapped into to attempt his coup.

“The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” Washington wrote in his 1796 Farewell Address about the dangers of partisanship in the hands of power-hungry demagogues, “and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

To ensure that democracy remains secure, Washington said that those in power must abide by the rule of law even when it contradicts their own political ambitions or policy desires.

“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government,” Washington argued. “But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”

Later he added, “All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”

In terms of Trump’s refusal to follow the law after he lost the 2020 election, conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in February that eight Republicans who studied all of Trump’s election fraud claims found that “all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

He concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.”

In terms of Trump’s waging war against Iran without legal authorization from Congress (as required by the Constitution) and without explicitly stating the cause, conservative columnist David French wrote in The New York Times last week that he has boxed himself and America in.

“Here is the present situation, in a nutshell: The United States and Israel have established absolute air dominance over the nation of Iran,” French explained. “In a few short days, our combined forces have destroyed Iran’s ability to protect its own airspace, have killed much of Iran’s senior military and civilian leadership, and have sunk much of Iran’s navy.”

The problem is that Iran manages to get America to withdraw after closing the Strait of Hormuz, they will declare victory because of the optics of the West withdrawing due to that economic pressure.

“That’s the logic that leads to a quagmire,” French pointed out. “If America declares victory now, when the Iranian regime is still in power and the strait is closed, then Iran perversely can claim that it won. It took a huge punch, absorbed the blow, and still forced America to climb down. It employed its ultimate weapon — closing the strait — and America had no effective answer.”

He added, “Commit to opening the strait (and keeping it open) by force, and the U.S. may well find itself in yet another open-ended, costly conflict with at least some American soldiers on Iranian soil. This would be war on our enemy’s terms and terrain, with the potential of slowly but surely inflicting casualties and costs on the American military until we grow tired of the conflict and leave.” To prevent either outcome from occurring, the US needs a “military miracle,” which seems very unlikely.

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