‘How many American troops should die for this?’: veterans split on war with Iran

Nearly two decades after his second tour, Nathan Wendland is still troubled by his experiences in Iraq.

Like 700,000 other Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the 46-year-old former US army staff sergeant receives compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder. Last January, Wendland checked himself into a psychiatric emergency room because he was worried he would kill himself. He was on the mend, but then Donald Trump ordered a sustained campaign of airstrikes on Iran. All those memories came flooding back.

“This war brings triggers into the news cycle every hour,” he said. “I cannot focus on my daily life.”

For Wendland and other veterans of the post-9/11 wars, the attack on Iran brings troubling echoes of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, another war of choice based on questionable claims of weapons of mass destruction that threatens to destabilize the entire region, with no clear endgame and a seemingly callous disregard for civilian casualties.

Nathan Wendland. Photograph: Courtesy of Nathan Wendland

Six US military service members have been killed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes. In Iran, US-Israeli airstrikes struck a girls school and left more than 100 children dead.

“We’ve put young men and women and support staff in bases all over the world at risk for no reason,” said Shawn VanDiver, a navy veteran and founder of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of 250 veterans, national security and human rights groups which helped rescue thousands of America’s Afghan allies after Kabul’s 2021 fall to the Taliban.

VanDiver said the irony was that many veterans voted for Trump specifically because he promised to keep the US out of wars. “Too many of our generation and friends died fighting these illegal wars that he said he wasn’t going to get us back into,” he said.

In Washington, lawmakers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been among the most outspoken in their rebuke of the administration.

“It’s a scary situation when you don’t hear what the plan is, what the victory is, when the president doesn’t lay out what the goals are. You don’t know what part you are in that mission, and what does that mean for your life,” said Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and marine corps veteran of the Iraq war whose unit sustained heavy casualties.

Gallego said the war was illegal, arguing there was “no imminent threat” permitting the Trump administration to circumvent congressional authorization.

Democratic representative Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania, a navy veteran of the Iraq war, said “every hawk cheerleading this war” should “answer a simple question: how many American troops should die for this?”

Veteran opinion is hardly unanimous, however, including in Congress.

Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican and combat veteran of the Iraq war, backed the president, arguing the six American service members killed by Iran “gave their lives in support of a noble mission: protecting: protecting their fellow Americans and keeping our homeland secure”.

Trump won nearly two-thirds of the veteran vote in 2024, according to exit polls. Many, especially, older veterans, are sticking with the president, saying he took bold action to attack a regime determined to destroy the US.

“They chant ‘death to Israel’, ‘death to the United States’,” said Don Buel, a 77-year-oldnavy veteran of the Vietnam war, who ministered for the Campus Crusade for Christ.

Buel, who lives in Minden, Nevada (population 3,000), is a three-time Trump voter. “They say we’re the great Satan,” he said of the Iranian government. “You can’t negotiate with that.”

The American Legion, which boasts 1.6 million members in more than 12,000 posts across America, released a statement praising the presidentTrump. “The Iranian regime has been the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, kidnapping and murdering U.S. citizens and targeting U.S. military and allied personnel through proxies,” the statement said. “While there may be debate about the immediate justification for these actions, there is strong bipartisan agreement that the Iranian regime poses an enormous threat to the United States and our allies.”

But to Stephanie Keegan, the US military’s attack on Iran is both illegal and not worth the loss of American lives.. Her son, Sgt Daniel Keegan, deployed on two special operations tours in Kandahar, Afghanistan, with the 82nd Airborne Division and succumbed at home after developing an infection linked to his heroin addiction.

Daniel Keegan. Photograph: Courtesy of Stephanie Keegan

Keegan said her son, who was named seventh Special Group Soldier of the Year, would strongly oppose this war. “This would be an absolute abomination to him,” she said. “The rules and the constitution were not followed. The necessity has not been validated. He would have felt deceived.”

VanDiver said his immediate concern is for the safety of 1,100 of America’s Afghan allies at Camp Al Sayliyah, a former US military base in Qatar that is now run by the state department.

US patriot missiles are intercepting most Iranian attacks, he said, but the explosions send flaming balls of shrapnel falling from the sky, “flying into bedrooms where their children are sleeping. They are terrified.”

Residents of the camp, who are awaiting permission to come to the US, include 150 immediate family members of active duty military, VanDiver said.

Rachel Leingang contributed reporting