American patriots, what will you tell your sons and daughters when they ask why you stayed silent about the unprovoked American-Israeli attacks against the Iranian people, which have lit a blaze across the whole Middle East?
To all the veterans who are appalled by these attacks—it’s time to be brave. So many of you served in our military with courage and honor, facing down real enemies on distant battlefields. The fear of being socially ostracized, labeled a traitor, or losing your pension and your place at the table may feel frightening. But courage isn’t the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it. Just like Joe Kent.
Joe Kent is no armchair critic. He is a decorated Green Beret, a Special Forces warrior who earned his stripes the hard way—eleven combat deployments, six Bronze Stars, service in elite units of which most Americans will never hear. He lost his wife to ISIS in the chaos of a war that the U.S. financed and enabled in Syria. Kent didn’t flinch when the bullets flew. He charged into the fight for his country. And now, in this moment, he is showing the same bravery again. He resigned his post as director of the United States Counterterrorism Center in the Trump administration rather than go along with a new war manufactured for Israel’s benefit—a war that does nothing to secure American borders, American jobs, or American lives. He spoke the truth when it cost him the wrath of the Epstein class and the neoconservative establishment. That is patriotism in action.
The very word “patriot” comes from the Greek patḗr “father” and then to the Greek word patrís “fatherland,” and then through Latin patriōta “fellow countrymen” and finally, in English meaning “lover of the fatherland,” your own people, your own soil—not a foreign capital thousands of miles away. The neoconservatives cannot use “patriotic” to describe any lobby, donor, or ideology that demands American blood and treasure for someone else’s fight. That is an intentionally deceptive application of the word.
Our Founders understood this. They placed the power to declare war squarely with Congress because they knew kings and executives love glory and expansion. They wanted reserved, accountable men—answerable to the people—to decide when American sons would bleed. Today that safeguard lies in ruins. We have devolved into promoting gangster foreign policies where might makes right, and patrís is whatever the Netanyahu crowd says it is. President George Washington, in his Farewell Address of 1796, specifically warned against habitual fondness or hatred toward other countries, which could make the U.S. a “slave” to foreign passions or interests. He was proven to be wise and prescient. If only we had followed his advice. How many wars would we have avoided? How many millions of lives would have been saved over the past 230 years?
Veterans, active-duty service members, officers, and many in positions of real power: You know the pattern. The propaganda machine revs up another terrorist regime, another “existential threat,” another “cakewalk,” another round of fairy tales about imminent danger. The same voices that sold Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen now push aggressive war on behalf of Israel. But you have seen the results up close. You have buried friends. You have watched countries we “liberated” collapse into chaos, breeding the next generation of enemies and terrorism. You know these wars are illegal without congressional approval and violate many international laws. You know they are not defensive. They are elective adventures that enrich foreign lobbies and the military–industrial complex while bankrupting our moral credibility and future while setting the stage for more wars.
It is time to publicly challenge and object to an immoral war. It is not cowardice; it is the highest form of moral courage. If you are in uniform and ordered into another unlawful strike or occupation, lawfully speak out to your superiors. If you sit in Congress or the administration, vote against funding, invoke the War Powers Resolution, and no more blank checks. Do not hide behind “bipartisan consensus” or fear of primary challenges from Epstein-class billionaire donors. Your oath was to the Constitution of the United States, not to foreign interests. Speak out against this fool’s errand. If speaking out in public is not an option for you, at least encourage your friends and associates to speak out and resist.
The Epstein files and the endless flow of dark money have given us a glimpse of how this machine operates. It is not conspiracy; it is pattern. Decade after decade, America First rhetoric on the campaign trail turns into Israel First action in office. Our leadership apes the very brutality it claims to oppose—assassinations, illegal bombings, collective punishment—while the world watches in horror as millions across the Middle East suffer. That brutish rhetoric and behavior has infected our own national ethos. Meanwhile, our own veterans come home broken, our debt explodes past $39 trillion, and another generation of young Americans is told to suffer and die for dreams of Greater Israel.
This is not patriotism. It is servitude.
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Joe Kent stared down bullets in Iraq and Yemen. Now he stares down the war machine in Washington. The rest of you—veterans, bureaucrats, lawmakers who still remember what the Constitution says—have a choice. You can keep marching to the old drumbeat, terrified of the names they will call you. Or you can be brave. Our children are watching. The country is watching. History is watching. True loyalty to the patrís demands nothing less than the courage you showed on the battlefield. It is time to show it again—this time at home, for America.
Stop this evil. Refuse. Withdraw. Reclaim the republic.
It’s time to be brave.
