Radio Atlantic: ‘He Doesn’t Understand War’
Ruben Gallego is an Iraq War veteran, a three-term congressman, and a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Despite all that, he’s as confused as most Americans about what’s happening with Iran.
America isn’t at war, he told me in an interview Wednesday morning, but that “doesn’t mean that we’re not in conflict … and we don’t know how long it’s going to take.” As we spoke, Gallego was preparing to head to a classified briefing on the Iran situation, but he wasn’t confident about getting answers anytime soon. He kept using the word “scary” to describe what’s ahead. But the point he stressed repeatedly was how detached the politicized debate in Washington—as well as the chatter that erupted on social media about World War III after the strike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani—can feel to the troops on the ground.
Gallego fought alongside many marines who were killed in Iraq, including his best friend, and at several points in our interview started to cry, remembering what happened to them. He said he wishes President Donald Trump could feel more immediately the fear of death, and the thoughts of revenge, that come with serving on the front lines. A lack of strategic clarity around a conflict, of the sort that exists in our current confusing stance toward Iran, makes things much worse. “If you’re a marine,” he said, “the first thing they teach you is mission objective.”
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By Edward-Isaac Dovere, The Atlantic