Exploring new levels of American hubris and insanity and a growing movement to reject them.
President Donald Trump and his gang of loyal bootlickers. Credit: New York Times
While claiming to have ongoing “positive talks” with the Iranians—none of which the Iranians have acknowledged or are even aware of—the United States is sending thousands of American troops to a destination 6,000-plus miles away from the nearest US coast, young men all locked, loaded, and ready to invade a country the size of Western Europe with a population of approximately 92,000 people. Rumors have it that the initial target of the operation appears to be Kharg Island, an oil-processing facility 15 miles off of the coast of Iran and 410 miles northwest of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
For national security reasons, the mission and purpose of this utterly insane, multibillion-dollar operation is Top Secret, not only to the American tax payers footing the bill, but to members of the armed forces who are packed like sardines on ships sailing around the Arabian sea, lying in their bunks wondering, What the fuck are Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff thinking?
Kharg Island is surrounded by a network of sophisticated intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms with strike systems positioned deep in Iran. Even if US forces get past Iranian missile batteries and the barrage of man-held shoulder-fired missiles raining down on them from the mountainous coastal high ground, blasting US helicopters out of the sky like helpless shit flies, what will happen to US ground troops if they miraculously make it onto the island and actually come face-to-face with Kharg’s 8,000 inhabitants? What is their strategic objective and how will they get food, fuel, weapons, and medical supplies needed to maintain their position? By the accounts of former high-ranking war veterans like retired Colonels Douglas Macgregor and Daniel Davis, they will be sitting ducks with no way out.
‘Hell, No, We Won’t Go!’
Since the beginning of the June 2025 12-day war with Iran, US/Israeli bombing raids, drone attacks, and on-the-ground covert CIA/Mossad regime-change operations have resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 Iranians, and God knows how many US servicemen, the actual body count of which the Pentagon has managed to keep under wraps and away from the American public as they have done in every conflict since WWI. This bloody aggression has complicated matters for the Trump administration who has lost at least half of its MAGA base, and more important, it has put a huge crimp in the confidence of US servicemen who are rapidly waking up to the reality that they are being used as cannon fodder for Israel, a murderous, bloodthirsty Zionist state currently influencing US foreign policy.
Credit: Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Similar to the vociferous Vietnam War protests in the late 60s and early 70s, a new generation of morally conscious young men has emerged and is threatening to throw a wrench in the Trump Administration’s out-of-control military aggression against the sovereign nation of Iran. Today, protests are coming from battle-ready US Marines and other members of the armed forces who have taken an oath to serve and protect their country and have the courage to exercise their right and duty to refuse to participate in an illegal, immoral, and unjust US/Israeli war spearheaded by an unhinged, duplicitous, billionaire, draft-dodging United States Commander in Chief and former Epstein pedophile bro.
An Explosion of Conscientious Objectors
The Center on Conscience & War (CCW) is an 80-year-old nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of conscience, opposes military conscription, and serves all conscientious objectors to war. Mike Prysner is CCW’s executive director. He also co-founded March Forward!, an antiwar group of veterans and active service members.
A US Army veteran, Prysner enlisted in 2001 when he was 17 and left the military in 2005 after his company participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq where he served for a year.
In a recent interview, Prysner reported that CCW has received a massive increase in inquiries from soldiers seeking to submit conscientious objector (CO) applications. Prysner cites a “shift in consciousness” among young people in the United States, spurred by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Referring to the Trump Administration’s unprovoked war with no legitimate rationale, no rational justification, and America’s partnership with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) that continues to commit genocide on the Palestinian people, Prysner remarked:
They have imposed this on the American people, the Iranian people and tens of thousands of service members and their families who believe this is deeply wrong. You know, we haven’t just experienced a surge in calls, of inquiries, but a surge in people who have actually started the process of filing as conscientious objectors, which is a right to all service members to refuse to participate. We have had about a 1,000% increase in CO clients just since the beginning of the war [emphasis added].
To put this into perspective, Prysner stated:
. . . some of our counselors have been doing this for many, many decades, and did this through the entire global war on terror, through the worst years of the Iraq War, the worst years of the Afghanistan War, the highest levels of civilian casualties in both of those wars. And what they are saying is the level that they are seeing now of new conscientious objector clients that we have taken on is unlike anything they have ever seen before, including the worst years of those wars.
The Tipping Point
In his talks with dozens of young service members filing CO claims prior to deployment, Prysner observed that these were men who never mentioned they were scared of dying in a war that they don’t believe in, but were scared of killing in a war that they don’t believe in, and were scared of the long-term moral consequences of their actions, a reality that haunts American soldiers, past and present, men who have lived and are living with nightmares and the emotional battle scars of committing unspeakable acts of violence from WWII to Vietnam to Guatemala to the war in Iraq.
. . . the number one thing that is cited by service members when I ask them what was their breaking point, what is the reason that made them decide that they had to become a CO, and it was the Minab school bombing, the U.S. massacre at the girls’ school in Iran.
I think the military is aware of that, too. We actually heard from a couple of people who said that’s when they lost internet access and social media access on a ship, is when the news of that broke. And so, you know, I think that regardless of whether or not the U.S. commits ground forces, the fact that U.S. troops are being used to kill from neighboring countries, I think that weighs heavily on people.
Opting Out
The Center on Conscience & War has established an extensive support network for members of the armed forces seeking to claim conscientious objector status. CCW’s websiteprovides a wealth of information (instructions, guidelines, and military regulations for each branch of service) to help interested servicemen start and navigate the process of ditching their ribbons and medals and becoming conscientious objectors.
Note: Historically, the ultimate demise of every heavy-handed petty tyrant from Mussolini to Stalin, and the loss of their power and control, has always ended with a divided, unpredictable, and disloyal military.
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“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.”
— Joseph Heller, an American author (1923 – 1999) best-known for his debut novel Catch-22 (1961), a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice.
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