WASHINGTON – Since President Trump authorized strikes against Iran on Friday, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a Marine combat veteran who fought in Iraq, has been speaking out about the human cost of war with Iran. Through national and local interviews throughout the week, Gallego has underscored that it’s not politicians who pay the ultimate price for regime change, it’s young working-class kids.
Watch and read excerpts from Senator Gallego’s interviews below:
The Source with Kaitlin Collins on CNN
“They didn’t think this thoroughly. They put our men and women at risk. They put our allies at risk. We’re seeing the results of that with already six dead. We have embassies that are being bombed right now. We have a CIA station that was just bombed because they did not follow through all the proper procedures you do before you go to war, and instead of actually doing things the right way.”
Deadline with Nicole Wallace on MS Now
“I still don’t know what the endgame is. There still is no clear indication. What is success? What is victory? What is Iran going to look like when this is done and what [is] the timetable? I think that’s also very concerning. We should all be concerned because we have been very clear – the American public has been very clear that we don’t want another forever war. And we are currently engaging into something that is potentially going to just keep on evolving.
“Who ends up paying for this are the men and women of this country that serve us and the whole public right now, because [the] government is distracted from what they really should be doing, which is focusing on what people are worried about, which is the cost of living and everything else that’s really hurting everyday Americans.”
“The amount of money we’re burning through right now could have paid for a lot of health insurance, could have paid for food stamps, could have paid to help people buy their first homes, whatever it is. But we ended up following an ally into a situation that’s just going to burn through our time, our cash, our money.”
“There was a great debate in 2003 in the US military about preemptive strikes It’s a moral issue. Do you strike first when you think someone is going to come after you? And in that case, it was Iraq. Now we’re talking about a preemptive strike based on another nation going to war and putting us in the crosshairs. Doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not part of our existential approach to providing security for the United States.”
“Is this in our national interest, number one. If you have to do war making, is this the only way to actually, effectively, secures our national interests? […] Were we properly even aligned and ready for this war? It doesn’t sound like it. […] We didn’t have force protection lined up. We certainly didn’t have our allies lined up. […] There may have been other ways, and then we could have discussion about that, but certainly not this way, certainly not this timing.”
“This whole thing, which is not planned out, makes it extremely dangerous, extremely volatile. The way they’re doing it, you could tell right now that this administration only had the concept of a one to two – one to three day war, and now they’re finding themselves in a situation where we might be in this thing a longer time, which again, how does this […] interact with our national interests?”
“¿Por qué estamos en guerra contra Irán? ¿Qué es el interés nacional de los Estados Unidos? ¿Por qué ya casi seis hombres y mujeres se murieron en defensa de nuestro país? ¿Por qué estamos en guerra? Todavía no tiene una buena razón. El secretario Rubio tiene una razón, el secretario de la defensa tiene otra razón, el presidente tiene seis o siete razones, pero nadie nos puede decir por qué fuimos a guerra en este tiempo y sin el permiso del congreso. Porque ahora lo que está ocurriendo, tenemos miles de nuestros hombres y mujeres en las fuerzas armadas que están en peligro ahora.”
MS Now All in with Chris Hayes
“Young American men and women are dying because of these idiots that are going to sacrifice U.S. men, U.S. women, without any real thought about what they’re doing, what the consequences are going to bring to these families. I feel like I’m repeating what I saw 20 years ago.”
“There was no imminent threat to our country. Imminent threat means that it was going to happen. What we just heard from, you know, Marco Rubio was essentially that we were going to get attacked because someone was going to attack and they were going to eventually attack us. And it was therefore we decided to preempt attack. In what world does that justify us going to war, risking our men and women? And that’s what we have to put on the record when it comes to Republicans and some Democrats coming up pretty soon.”
“The fact that our country gave up its war making [powers], started inflicting damage on another country because of another country’s decision – that is not that is not leadership. That is not what you want to see leadership doing, and it’s absolutely horrendous.”
“Whenever we’re sending our men and women into harm’s away, we should be actually over communicating to the public, like ‘What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What’s the end goal? How do we get out?’ All these questions that just have not exactly been answered by this administration.”
“For example, [there] was a reason we should have gone to Afghanistan, that is where the 911 attackers were trained. They were harboring Al Qaeda. Iraq was a war of choice. A war of choice that distracted us from where we need to be focused on, which should have been Afghanistan, Russia and China. Now we’re engaging in another war of choice.”
CNN State of the Union with Dana Bash
“I was actually with my mom this morning at breakfast, and she reminded me about the feelings that she had knowing that I was in the middle of a war and not knowing if I was alive or dead for a couple of days. Now we’re putting potentially tens of thousands of our families through that with the President.
“By the way, he has not had one real press conference to really explain to the American public, why are we putting our men and women in danger? What is the national interest of our country being going to war right now, and why are we going to expend potentially the blood of Americans and potentially destabilize a whole area. There is no leadership right now that’s coming from this president, and we’re in the middle of dropping bombs right now, and men and women are dying.”
“Who in America asked for this? Who in America asked American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen to put on to put their lives on the line for us? […] It is horrible what happened in Iran, this is a horrible regime, but it is not our responsibility to go in there and change the regime. There was no imminent threat in order for us to be doing this right now. […] It just disturbs me that we’re just basically remaking the same mistake of the Iraq War, the same mistake that 21 years later, I still live with. I still have family of friends […] that died in that war that I still talk to to this day and it hurts.”
“It is not in our interests to destabilize the region. It’s not in our interest to be involved in such a deadly confrontation. And certainly what happens after this is not going to be in our interest. And again, we’ve made the same mistake potentially that happened in Iraq, and it was unneeded this whole time.”
“For me as an Iraq war veteran, someone that had to go into some very dangerous situations, saw way too many of my friends die in the war, it really is scary how quickly we just lurched to war without any plans and for something I don’t think is actually [in] our interest. Especially putting our the men and women of our country at risk. It’s disgusting, and I think that we should do everything we can to stop this war and pull out before it gets worse.”