At the end of March, with the Iran war entering its second month and the casualty count already climbing, I attended the No Kings protest in Austin looking for veterans. I found plenty of them. After the piece ran at Slate I heard from several others who weren‘t at the protest but wanted to add their voice to the record. In early April, I sat down with three veterans I know, including one I served with, for longer conversations.

Kyle Dean served with the 25th Infantry Division across multiple deployments in the Middle East and Pacific. Kyle voted for Trump once, in 2016. He’s clear about why and equally clear about where he ended up.

“I was fed up with the whole system. Neither party felt like it represented people like me, and I thought maybe blowing the whole thing up a little was worth a shot. A lot of people made that calculation in 2016. Most of us didn’t make it again.”

Kyle didn’t. “My opinion of him has declined at about the same rate as his cognitive abilities.”

Trump’s attempted overthrow of the 2020 election results confirmed what Kyle already knew. “I was completely against him well before January 6th, but that was definitely one of the rubicons for me. It became clear this really was all about himself—the weaponization of every federal mechanism toward self-enrichment and the persecution of any opposition.”

Kyle didn’t have much patience for Trump’s performance as commander in chief. “He’s an insult to everyone who has held the job before or ever served. That role comes with a responsibility that can‘t be flippantly dismissed—not by treating casualties with ’that‘s the way it goes,’ not by receiving dead Americans at Dover with a fake tough-guy look in your self-promoting, Chinese-made hat. He refuses to listen to experts, or anyone not from Fox News. Everything is an act—the tough-guy persona, the ‘respect’ for our military. All of it.”

On how we ended up at war with Iran, Kyle sounded like a lot of the veterans I’d talked to at the protest. “I’m not even sure how this began. Nobody sat at the resolute desk and talked to me at 8pm about why this was necessary. Reasons and objectives change nearly hourly and depending on which sycophant has the mic. We all just woke up one morning and were at war with a formidable enemy. Seemingly not even Congress knows why.”

Kyle had some thoughts on how the war is going so far. “We’ve gone from demanding full surrender to begging the rest of the world to help and begging for negotiations. Right now Iran holds more power than they ever have, and when this ends they will be in a better position than they were.”

On where it‘s heading, he didn’t hedge. “It seems almost certain we will be introducing ground troops. With no clear objective. Again.” He paused. “We basically caught a skunk in a live trap.”

When I asked what he wanted people who haven‘t served to understand, he didn’t soften it.

“People who haven‘t served should understand people like me aren’t saying this as pacifists or never-Trumpers. This comes from people that know the costs, who understand what happens in a war and would rather use the military as a last resort or deterrence. The consequences of this will last generations. Go read a fucking book.”

***

Mike Cone is a Marine Corps infantry veteran who served as a mortarman and forward observer in Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines. He has never had any illusions about Donald Trump. Mike, like Trump, is from New York, and his lack of surprise goes back decades.

“From the time I became aware of who he was, as a teen in the early 80s, I thought he was a horrible excuse for a human being. When he got elected the first time, I didn’t expect anything good from the failed businessman with no moral compass who only cares about himself. I knew it was going to be a shit show.”

Watching Trump send people to war is something Mike takes personally. “He dodged the draft during Vietnam, called Marines who gave their lives at Belleau Wood ‘losers,’ and constantly tries to belittle or fire any career military officer who doesn’t agree with him. The man has no right to send anyone to war—especially an illegal one—or to be commander in chief for that matter.”

On how we got into Iran, Mike traced the line directly to Trump‘s ego and the people who knew how to play it. “This illegal war started with Trump’s ego being played by Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman. They got him to start the war they’ve been wanting for the last 47 years. Trump and his sycophant Hegseth went into this with no clear plan or objectives. They underestimated Iran and their capabilities. They had no plan for the Strait of Hormuz and its effect on the global economy, regardless of the lies to the contrary.”

At the Austin protest, Adrian, a former Army captain and war planner, told me about a graduate research paper he’d worked on in 2009 about that exact chokepoint—the Strait—how critical it was, how catastrophic its closure would be. That paper went to Washington seventeen years ago. Mike Cone, who wasn‘t at the protest and hadn’t heard any of that, arrived at the same place on his own.

The Pentagon personnel decisions landed hard. “Hegseth, who is unqualified for his position, has now fired over a dozen senior officers and replaced them with unqualified yes-men.”

On the ground troops question, Mike laid out the geography and the history without much optimism. “Iran is larger, more topographically challenging, and more internally unified than either Iraq or Afghanistan—both countries the U.S. already invaded without achieving its initial objectives. Unfortunately, I do believe we will put troops on the ground, and more soldiers and Marines will die because Trump’s ego will not allow him to pull out at this point. And through all of this, we have a Congress with no spine, unwilling to even attempt to stop the escalation.”

He had a lot to say about what most civilians don‘t understand. “I don’t think most understand what it takes to serve. They think that by paying lip service and thanking you for your service they‘re doing their part, even when they’re sincere. I don‘t think they understand the psychological and physical toll that war—especially an illegal one—can have on an individual. I don’t think they understand the difference between obeying a legal order and an illegal one. I don‘t think they can comprehend the logistics and the cost of war. And I don’t believe they understand at all the feeling of being ordered to war by a commander in chief who has no respect for the military. Let that one sink in.”

Mike had one more thing, not for me, but for a specific audience.

“I have one question of my own—for veterans who served or are still serving and still support Trump, this administration, and this war: How could you?”

***

Adam House is a medically retired Army combat veteran who served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan, and has spent years since then living and working abroad, most recently coaching Muay Thai in Thailand. He’s spent enough time away from the country he served to know how it looks from the outside.

Adam didn‘t start with Iran. He started with January 6th, and with the fact that it somehow didn’t disqualify Trump from anything. “I’m very disappointed in the American people for re-electing Trump as president after January 6th, 2021—the Capitol insurrection—and Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. I thought he should have been disqualified from ever being allowed to run for any office again, according to the Constitution. And I think that it’s a sad comment that the American people were still comfortable voting for him after he has shown himself to be a literal terrorist, because his actions did get Americans killed.”

Adam pointed out that our entry into the Iraq conflict in 2003, another deeply unpopular war, was handled better than this. The bar he reaches for isn‘t a high one. “When I think back to the initiation of the global war on terror under the Bush administration—regardless of how that played out, or how any of us may feel about how it played out—Bush at least put together what at the time we called a ‘coalition of the willing.’ He did look for support from allies and friends around the world and tried to explain to the American people what we needed to do and why. What I see Trump’s actions doing is not only lacking in both of those things, but he seems to be disregarding the wishes of the American people and actively alienating our friends and allies around the world.”

Adam coaches fighters and stays in contact with people across dozens of countries. He knows how this all reads from where they’re standing.

“I know people on practically every continent on Earth, and just from my anecdotal experience, I can speak to the fact that what the Trump regime is doing is unpopular, especially as it relates to the war in Iran, and people around the globe are suffering. And the consequences of this are only just now beginning to be felt.”

“A lot of people who used to have respect for America may never forgive us for what we’re doing right now. We’re only just beginning to feel the consequences. They’re going to be much more severe and much more numerous over time.”

On America‘s enemies, Adam was direct. “Our enemies are laughing at us. And our friends around the globe right now are crying because of what they see us doing to ourselves. Our allies are horrified and scrambling to see how to pick up the slack that’s left by the vacuum of leadership where America is no longer showing itself to be a true leader. But America’s enemies right now are laughing at us. And I believe many of them are actually exploring their options to see how they can take advantage of this current environment.”

He was of two minds about what that actually means. “On one hand, if you’re America’s enemies right now, maybe you don’t want to launch any kind of strikes or terrorist actions or military actions against us, because it’s very obvious that we’re shooting ourselves in the foot right now. And why attack somebody when they’re self-destructing? On the other hand, I think America probably has other enemies that are looking at this situation and actively trying to figure out how they can take advantage of our current lack of leadership and how they can hurt America.”

I asked if he was thinking about Russia specifically.

“We know for a fact that Russia and some of our other enemies around the globe, like China, for years—even decades now—have continued to launch constant online, digital attacks against the United States. And we know that foreign adversaries are trying to use American political polarization to their advantage. Things like on Twitter—we know that there are Russian bots, and they don‘t even care whether you’re radicalizing to the left or radicalizing to the right. Their whole focus is to just create further polarization. So they just want Americans to radicalize against one another. They’re kind of inserting themselves into the American body politic to take advantage of our own divisions here and just put gasoline on the fire of those divisions. That’s just one hint at how foreign governments are looking at American division and polarization right now, and our lack of leadership and the inept leadership that we have.”

When I asked what he hears from other veterans, across rank and background, the answer was bewildered clarity. “As far as serious policy analysts, longtime professional military brass, academics in the field who spend their careers actively studying the issues that are relevant to the current U.S. actions in Iran—all the way down to people like me, who are just lower enlisted guys who served in combat years ago—we all seem to be confused as to what the Trump regime is trying to do, and nobody can really make heads or tails of what they’re doing. The Trump regime’s actions are incoherent to everyone, even his own administration and allies.”

“It just tells me that the Trump regime is chaotic, incompetent, maybe even senile, and negligent, and just basically screwing the pooch at such a level that it‘s putting the American people and our constitutional republic in danger. The greatest threat to America right now—the greatest emergency that we face—is the occupant of the Oval Office. It’s like we’re standing on the brink of potential World War III, and it’s amateur hour in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government.”

Adam kept coming back to Afghanistan—the interpreters and allies who stood with American soldiers like him, knowing what it would cost them if things went wrong.

“I know for a fact that there are American soldiers—veterans—who are home living out our lives today because of the sacrifices that were made by our Afghan allies on the ground in Afghanistan. Individual Afghan interpreters and other supporters there literally put their lives on the line, put their families in danger, and some of them were even wounded and suffered a lot of negative consequences standing against their own fellow countrymen with the American military while we were there.”

“I don‘t care how many of them there are—any of them that want to escape the Taliban regime that’s currently in power, I think it’s a debt of honor on our heads to help them do that.”

The Afghan allies question connects directly to Iran in ways nobody in Washington seems to have considered. How a country treats its allies in one war shapes who’s willing to help in the next one. America’s record on that front in the Middle East is not a good one. Any future ground operation is going to require cooperation from local populations, informants, people willing to take risks. The calculus those people run is simple: what happened to the last group who helped America.

“If American military forces are going into Iran or anywhere else in the region, expecting anyone on the ground to join forces or ally themselves with us in any way—why and how could we possibly expect them to do that when they know the way we’ve thrown our Afghan allies under the bus? It puts our boots on the ground in danger. If we continue to have American pilots shot down, why would the residents of enemy territory take the risk to help our warriors?”

***

Kyle, Mike, and Adam served in different units, different theaters, at different times, came from different backgrounds and hold different political beliefs, but they arrived at the same conclusions, just like the dozens of veterans I spoke with at the No Kings protest. I‘ve been talking to my fellow veterans about Iran since March, at protests, in my inbox, in conversations that never made it into any article. I’ve been listening to podcasts with right-leaning veteran audiences where the hosts and guests are openly questioning and condemning what‘s happening. 

That’s not a scientific survey, and it would be inaccurate to pretend that every veteran feels this way—I’m sure plenty support Trump and the war, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But the longer this drags on with no clear objectives and no exit strategy, the harder it gets to find one who’s happy with how things are going.

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Nick Allison is veteran of the Iraq War and a writer based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost, The Fulcrum, and elsewhere. Find him on Bluesky @nickallison80.bsky.social, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Featured Image: Adam House, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, circa 2008