I will never forget the night Barack Obama walked down that red carpet and told the world we had killed Osama bin Laden. I did something that caught me completely off guard, something I didn’t expect. I did not celebrate when I heard this news, I grieved and I wept.
At first, I didn’t know what to think and why this was my initial response. But through time and contemplation, it became clear. For years I had been singularly focused on a mission that began when I was nineteen years old. I joined the Army straight out of high school. I deployed almost immediately. I stepped onto Afghan soil in 2003 and did not truly come home until 2010. I spent the better part of my twenties overseas, fighting an endless war.
By the time bin Laden was killed, I was twenty-eight years old, building a biometric combat training program for the Marine Corps. But what his death forced me to confront wasn’t about him at all. It was the image created around him. My entire adult life up to that point had revolved around a war born out of one name. And everything I had ever accomplished or experienced derived from it. From losing friends to finding a wife and starting a family to living in a constant state of heightened awareness, it all derived from 9/11.
But when he died, something inside me shifted. Not because I mourned the man, but because I suddenly realized how much of my life had been consumed by what he represented. A two-decade war. The death of my former platoon leader and the men I served along who went down with him that night. The countless visions of bodies and death. And the advancement of destruction instead of construction, resources poured outward while our own country weakened at home.
Today, after the strike on Iran and the reported death of its supreme leader, that same feeling came back, because I know what follows moments like this. You do not decapitate the leadership of a sovereign nation and simply walk away. This is not a limited raid or a symbolic strike. This is escalation at the highest level. I told my thirteen-year-old son tonight to prepare himself mentally for the possibility that this conflict could last until he is an adult himself.
We are told this is about preventing a nuclear weapon. But we were also told Iran’s nuclear capability had already been destroyed in previous operations. If it was destroyed, then what exactly justifies this escalation? If it was not destroyed, then why were we told it was?
This will cost lives. It will cost treasure. It will cost focus from a nation already buried in debt and internal division. And once American troops set foot on Iranian soil, momentum takes over. Once the bullets fly it doesn’t matter much why. Before long, mission creep takes over. I’ve seen it in Iraq, I’ve seen it in Afghanistan, and I see it in Iran.
I am not afraid for myself. My body has already given what it can to war. I am afraid for my son. I am afraid for the young men who will be sent into terrain over politics far more complex than Iraq ever was. And if we repeat Iraq in Iran, then Iraq will look small by comparison. But the strike has happened, and that cannot be undone. What can be demanded now is clarity, limits, and an exit that is real. If troops deploy, and I don’t see a possible scenario in which they don’t, they must not stay one hour longer than absolutely necessary. And when they leave, they must not return to prop up puppets or manage another endless reconstruction.
We have lived through this before. The American people must ensure that this does not become another war that outlives the reason it was started. Tonight, I am praying for our troops and our President. I’m praying for wisdom, patience and caution. And I am praying that restraint, not ego, defines what happens next.
