Born too late to deploy to the Middle East, born too early to deploy to the Middle East, born just in time to deploy to the Middle East.
The America that exists in 2026 cannot be separated from the nearly two and a half decades of constant conflict in which it has been embroiled in West Asia. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria, roughly 4.5-4.6 million people are estimated to have been killed in post-9/11 conflicts. The notion of war with Iran has haunted the American consciousness for decades, but it has now reached a critical fever pitch — a fever pitch it was led to by none other than the president who has spent years railing against American involvement in the Middle East. President Trump is renowned for his seemingly iron grip on his base: two impeachment attempts, multiple international scandals, indictment by a criminal court, and proven ties to the most notorious pedophile of the twenty-first century have not been enough to break his spell. The question that then must be asked is whether this most recent departure from his rallying principles will prove any different.
The Republican party that has existed ever since Trump descended down that golden Trump Tower escalator has had many major talking points, but none have been quite so prominent as that of Trump as a fundamentally anti-war president. A general commitment to an “America First” ideology — generally defined on a policy premise of ending America’s commitment to “forever wars” — was a dominating feature of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he has continued to carry it with him to this day.
This ideology was key to his fan base among legions of Republicans, including his own vice president. In 2023, J.D. Vance (then a relatively unknown senator from Ohio) backed President Trump’s bid for the 2024 presidency in a Washington Post article. Within it, Vance specifically calls out the Bush and Obama administrations for their years of intervention in Middle Eastern regional politics, noting that his “entire adult lifetime has been shaped by presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them.” The dramatic irony in this sentence is so deeply entertaining today that it makes one wonder if Vance was not lost to Hollywood as a screenwriter. Any remnants of the anti-Iran war American political establishment that was so entrenched — to the point that Tulsi Gabbard, current United States Director of National Intelligence, was selling “No War With Iran” T-shirts less than four years ago — have been well and firmly buried into the ground in the days since the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of Tehran, Isfahan, and other major Iranian cities.
But even if elite figures such as J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard have sacrificed their principles to the pyre of the presidency, that doesn’t necessarily mean the electorate that voted for “America First” principles will do the same. Vance is right about one thing: his entire adult life has been shaped by Middle Eastern conflict, just as it has shaped the lives of millions of people within and beyond his generation. The fact that we have seen such a large shift in such a short amount of time is indicative of a party and nation that is instrumentally in crisis. Under a Trumpist doctrine, the siren song of power is law, and it seems as if the people have begun to notice.
According to a CNN poll conducted from Feb. 28 to March 1, only 41 percent of the American public supports U.S. military intervention in Iran, a shocking divergence from the 92 percent who supported war in Afghanistan, or even the 76 percent who supported war in Iraq in the first days of conflict. As the days of conflict slowly tick by, it seems inevitable that this percentage will drop lower and lower. These rumbles of dissent have also not been limited to the civilian population but have begun spreading to the upper echelons of government as well.
Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a close political ally of Tulsi Gabbard, recently resigned from his position in protest over American actions in Iran. His decision cannot be separated from his military background: Kent served 11 combat deployments in the Middle East, and his wife, Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019. In his registration letter, published to X on March 17, Kent specifically noted Trump’s departures from his rallying principles as a justification for his own resignation, writing:
“I support the values and the foreign policies you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that wars in the Middle East were a trap…I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
It might be easy to dismiss Kent’s resignation as an outlier case, but to do so would be an understatement of just how tied into his party’s establishment he was. Kent recently came under fire for the release of emails detailing how he pressured intelligence analysts — who determined that criminal gang Tren de Aragua was not operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime — to alter their reports to line up with Trump’s statements. Here is an example of a man who has no trouble putting Trump over his country — except in this one, critical case.
It remains to be seen whether or not Trump has actually plunged us all into World War III, but the idea that he’s done so has undoubtedly taken root. At the time this article is being written, the Trump White House is actively debating the possibility of sending troops directly into Iran, a possible salvo to a protracted and bloody conflict that will leave Iran devastated. After all, the members of Trump’s inner circle are not the ones who will experience the brutal realities of an Iranian war, but American servicemembers and millions of Iranian civilians.
It has been said so many times that it has almost begun to feel like a cliche, but it is horrifyingly, achingly, unbearingly true. People are dying. People have died. People will continue to die, and Tulsi Gabbard and J.D. Vance will continue to bend the knee.
Featured Image Source: Vox