The Eisenhower Media Network (EMN) on March 8 published a hard-hitting statement, appealing to “the national interest of patriotic Americans,” in the American Military Tradition, to “Stop the Iran War,” attacking the “complete folly” of the Trump administration war policy. The appeal was signed by twenty high-ranking retired military and intelligence veterans, a number of them also members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The veterans introduced the statement in the following blunt language: “We the undersigned of the Eisenhower Media Network oppose this murderous war of aggression and hereby call for an immediate ceasefire” to be “followed by negotiations and war reparations to be paid by the aggressors.” They characterized the “ US/Israeli led war” as “illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, and aggressively escalatory,” with Iran posing “no imminent threat to U.S. national security.”
They counterposed the anti-American lunacy of the “warrior-ethos” of the Trump administration, as exemplified by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in the following way: “The Trump administration’s policy (announced by Pete Hegseth) of ‘war without mercy’ is both unjust and un-American. In America’s proud ideal of the citizen soldier, this is not who we are. This war is not America first. This is not what we do.”
Although they cite Rubio’s admission that Israeli intentions to go to war drove the timing of the war, they admit that Israel is not solely responsible, but point the blame for this war-of-choice to a “shared desire to enforce American hegemony, aligned with Zionist hegemonic goals of a ‘greater’ Israel.” Most importantly, they state that this combination is “generating a dynamic that approaches that of Armageddon. Even more frightening is that U.S. and Israeli leaders are citing Biblical passages and alleged Judeo-Christian beliefs in support of this war. It seems that we are only a few steps away from the madness of the Crusades.”
In their professional military opinion, this war, like all the wars since World War II, follows the failed military pattern of no defined plan, constantly changing objectives, and no ability to be won. As in Vietnam and Afghanistan, ground troops could be introduced at first in a small way with special forces, but then rapidly built up, leading to disaster and defeat. After decades of “strategic exhaustion,” the U.S. has no capability of waging a sustained ground war, without the industrial supply base, the necessary number of troops, or the political support for a sustained war, which would require conscription, they warn.
