‘Send Barron’: My New Pitch for the Iran War

‘Send Barron’: My New Pitch for the Iran War

Just this week, President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth stood by as four grieving families watched the remains of their children return home from the Iran war: 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, and Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton. Feehan was 25. Gonzales was just 19. Rampersad was 28. Swinton was 30.

The same day, official War Department channels put out a new set of recruiting ads. Over images of young Americans in uniform was the text “SEND ME.”

Of course, we’d just seen whom the Trump administration sent – and what became of them in a war that has brought zero benefit to our nation and flies in the face of what Trump promised and his own supporters voted for.

And now, after five months of that war and of constant jeering dismissals of those who question it, the administration puts out an ad campaign asking for more.

Enough Gonzaleses and Joneses - Send Trumps, Shapiros, and Podhoretzes

Me at 17, after a field exercise in the Army 1/27 Infantry. 25th ID.

Many of the authors of this war and many of its chief proponents have adult children who could enlist. Other pro-war figures are themselves within the age range to sign up.

Just between Trump and two of the loudest pro-war voices at Fox News, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade, there are ten adult children. All ten have publicly documented civilian lives. Barron Trump, 20, is studying business and enjoying an entrepreneurial venture making yerba mate drinks.

Hannity has proposed IDF-style mandatory military service for young Americans. His own two adult children followed civilian university paths.

Kilmeade has presented maps of potential targets on his Fox show, talking about “where we might hit” next like he’s playing a game of Risk. No risk to his family, though.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – whose often bad-tempered and brusque defenses of the war are among the most convoluted and propagandistic – has a son who plays as a running back for the Florida Gators.

Virulently pro-war talking head John Podhoretz has three kids.

Ben Shapiro, the shameless operative who’s never met a war he didn’t love, could have enlisted himself any number of times.

To paraphrase the War Department ad, SEND THEM. SEND BARRON. SEND RUBIO. SEND SHAPIRO.

What ‘No Panicans’ Really Means: ‘No Decision-Making Power for Those With Kin In the Game’

Of course, I do not really want Barron Trump to fight and die in this unjust war. My point, rather, is that Trump is a failed leader – because a true leader feels the same empathy for the sons and daughters of others that he ought to feel for his own. A true leader understands that every human life is possessed of an incomparable dignity and worth. No human person – least of all the children of the nation you have taken on the sacred duty of leading and representing – is disposable.

That principle should compel a leader to work out his approach to questions of war with fear and trembling. Instead, the administration’s prissy little slogan since the opening weeks of this war has been “No panicans.” As if opponents of the war lacked courage.

But by throwing “panicans” out of the control room, the administration excluded from the decision-making process exactly what was needed: People capable of being filled with fear – for the life and well-being of others. That kind of “panic” fear is not weakness. It is the foundation of courage. And people who lack the capacity to feel that fear are already possess the essence of cowardice: indifference to the vulnerable and carelessness for the dignity and sanctity of human life.

Of course, what the authors of this disastrous war dismiss as “panic” isn’t really panic at all. It’s not the kind of fear that overthrows reason, that is. Rather, it’s the kind of fear that quakes at being careless or imprudent when the sanctity of human lives is at stake.

A father who feels nothing when he sees his child toddling toward a high ledge is not brave. He is negligent. A ruler who can contemplate dead soldiers, widows, orphans, ruined cities, and a widening war without trembling is not strong and courageous. He is unfit to command.

Fear for yourself can make you shrink. Fear for another person can make you stand between him and the danger. That is true courage: love taking the reins of fear and spurring it toward sacrifice.

Reminder for Trump: ‘Send Me’ Means Me

“Send me” comes from the Holy Scripture that Hegseth so loves to cite when it suits his purposes. In a famous passage, the prophet Isaiah sees the throne of God, cries out that he is unclean, and has his lips seared by a coal. Only after being broken open and purified does he answer: “Here am I. Send me.”

And then, he offers himself.

The Pentagon took a sacred act of self-offering, ripped it out of a context of profound humility, and turned it into a slogan aimed at spending the life of somebody else’s eighteen-year-old for evil.

To be clear, I enlisted in the Army infantry at 17. My father was an infantryman. My brother was an infantryman. My son fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria. My grandfather served in World War II and Korea.

I do not despise military service, in other words. But I do despise its exploitation. I reject the cowardly politics that treats the willingness of families like mine as an inexhaustible national resource while mocking every demand for prudence as cowardice.

Those who join our voices to Isaiah’s sacred “Send me” are not disposable toy soldiers. And we have the right to ask: Send us where? For what? For how long? And what will be left when we come home?

Lack of Empathy Makes The Powerful Thoughtless

If the Trump administration really believed this war – and its further escalation – were necessary, they would have made a case for it by now. After all, the Christian just-war tradition should apply now more than ever, given the loudness with which men like Hegseth keep insisting we are a Christian nation. But they know as well as we do that that tradition is not a permission slip for rulers to play games with human lives. It is a restraint upon them – and this war comes nowhere close to passing muster against its principles.

Nothing could be clearer than the fact that those who maneuvered us into this war have no respect for that Christian tradition – and have no intention of ever giving a thoughtful justification of the war in moral terms. There is no such justification.

In fact, “NO PANICANS” is what leaders say when they do not want to make that case. It interrupts what should be a deadly-serious moral consideration with a schoolyard taunt. It tells Americans that moral seriousness about the deaths of our own fellow citizens is unwelcome, and that “Trusting in Trump” is a substitute for judgment.

Isaiah’s words were one man offering his own throat. So was the answer of our brave dead.

We don’t honor them by turning their deaths into a reason for more deaths.

We can’t defend America under the leadership of an administration that pretends fear for American lives is cowardice.

And we must recognize that the powerful person who feels no fear for the vulnerable is not the brave adult in the room.

He is the reason the vulnerable urgently need one.

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