A Democratic Party representative who served in the Iraq war has issued a statement denouncing the rhetoric around the ongoing strikes on Iran.
Donald Trump approved a bombing campaign against Iran earlier this week, with veterans now serving in government airing their concerns. New York Democrat Rep. Pat Ryan, a veteran who twice served in Iraq, issued a statement to CNN expressing his concern over the current Iran situation.
He said, "If I hear one more chicken hawk who’s never served a single day in uniform sitting in a gold-plated office in DC or Mar-a-Lago or anywhere else, try to talk tough having never seen what war is about, I’m going to lose my mind."
Fellow representatives backed Ryan's comments, with Rep. Eugene Vindman calling the conflict with Iran an unnecessary use of US resources.
He said, "I will not be shedding a tear for the Iranian regime and the Ayatollah. I understand the threat but I also understand that wars are easy to start and hard to finish.
"This is a commitment of American blood and treasure to a conflict that we didn’t need to be engaged in."
Donald Trump has said the U.S. will stay in the fight for as long as it takes to achieve the country's objectives, although his administration has not yet laid out a compelling case for the operation, according to some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
John Bolton, the president's national security advisor during his first administration, told Joanna Coles on a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" on Wednesday that he is concerned that Trump hasn't thought through the implications of the strikes. He added that the president's lack of a decision-making process "magnifies the risk" that something could go wrong.
“As long as things are going successfully, he’ll stick with it," Bolton said. "If we run into real difficulty, and I hope we don’t, and we shouldn’t at this point, but if we do, because anything is possible, that would be the testing time to see whether he was able to stick it out."