The recent strikes on Iran by the United States and its allies have resulted in one of the lowest-approved conflicts in history, according to recent polls of the American public.
Further action is polling even lower, with most Americans deeply opposed to boots on the ground in Iran.
How does the reaction to this war compare to past conflicts with the United States, and what makes this one different?
Also, it’s not just the public reaction that matters, but how do lawyers and lawmakers feel about this war?
Guests:
- Dakota Rudesill, professor, Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law
- Bill Butler, Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.)/president, National Veterans Memorial and Museum
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. Following a year of tit for tat aggressions, on February 28th, the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, initiating a lasting conflict between the three countries. This lasting conflict has become one of the most unpopular wars in American history, and that popularity only continues to plummet.
With many Americans reporting a lack of reasoning for going to war with Iran and as gas prices continue to rise across the world. How will this conflict's approval evolve? Joining us now is Dakota Rudesill, professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.
Welcome to the show, Dakota. So one of the biggest challenges for the American people with the current war with Iran is the lack of reasoning for why we initiated the conflict. What do you believe the reason is the United States launched this attack on Iran? Besides what you're hearing in the news, what do you think the reason?
Dakota Rudesill: Oh, well, it is not entirely clear to me why they decided to launch this, to be frank. And this administration has said a variety of contradictory things about its war aims, from regime change to its not regime change, to eliminate a nuclear program that President Trump said that had been obliterated by the United States and Israel last June.
To the Straits of Hormuz, which were open before. Now they're closed. So it's just not entirely clear to me why they initiated this.
Juravich: How does that compare to rationalizations of wars of the past? You know, for World War II, we were going to defeat Hitler. For Vietnam, it was to stop the spread of communism. Were those more firm rationales than you're seeing with this conflict with Iran?
Rudesill: I think very much so. This is the, I think, least justified war that we've had in our country's history in just a variety of ways. So first of all, there was not an armed attack on the United States or U.S. Allies to any sort of level which would justify kind of on a proportionality basis, a war of this kind.
And so, you know, December 7th, right, 1941, the Japanese attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany declared war, right. You know, you look at other conflicts as well. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, a US ally. In 1950, North Korea invaded US ally South Korea.
So I think really kind of the only conflict I can think of, which is just as much of a discretionary war of choice as this one is, was the 2003 initiated US war against Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. There the claim was weapons of mass destruction, which did not surface.
But I think a really, really important contrast is that President Bush personally had more support, the Iraq war had more supports. Bush went to the U.S. Congress, got a force authorization from Congress, which has the power to declare war. President Bush went the United Nations. Ultimately, he came up short in terms of getting a UN resolution for use of force.
But he could make the argument that he was enforcing UN resolutions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. None of those circumstances that I just listed are present here. So I think it's on extremely wobbly footing.
Juravich: Yeah, something else we saw with this war that's absent is the whole idea of rallying around the flag. Past administrations have done that before going into a conflict, you know, making a big important speech, you talking about America and the American dream and the America promise and America's role in the world. Why do you think the Trump administration did not try to inspire America beforehand?
Rudesill: I don't know. I'm not a very good analyst of, you know, what is, you know, President Trump's motives or, you know, those around him. You know, I would just kind of look at the facts we have before us. So President Trump gave the State of the Union address, not, you know, just a number of days before he started this war. And it was it was not there as any sort of significant issue.
Juravich: Well, he didn't mention Iran in that speech until more than an hour into it. I mean, maybe even an hour 20, something like that. Yeah.
Rudesill: That's right, that's right. I mean, so here he has a national and global stage, right, to talk about this issue. And, you know, just didn't, you know, that that was not the centerpiece of it.
In contrast, again, go back to, you know, both President Bush's, who when they initiated wars of choice, had they and their administration, spent several months building the case, talking about the intelligence that they had talking about the threat to the United States.
Again, going to Congress and there were hearings and floor debates in both chambers, Congress doing its constitutional work, going to the United Nations, presenting the intelligence and legal arguments. You know, and on the law, we have not seen any quality legal argument from this administration yet as to why this is legal under international law or the constitution.
Just a bunch of off the cuff statements and some filings which do not really do anything substantive. So I think it just reflects the fact that there really is not the predicate here in terms of public support, presidential support, US law, international law, intelligence, any of it. This is just the president giving an order and now we have a war.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Americans' reactions to wars with Dakota Rudesill, a professor at OSU's Moritz College of Law. Well, we have hindsight now, but we're able to look at wars that started as popular and then plummeted. So I'm thinking mainly Vietnam and Iraq as those examples. What do you think are some of the biggest causes for decrease in support? Was it the length of it or were there other things?
Rudesill: Yeah, well, so war is just a profoundly complicated matter. And additionally, the adversary gets a vote. And there's always the possibility of just massive looming possibility of unexpected developments. The second Bush administration did not expect Iraq to descend into chaos after Saddam Hussein was removed or for a civil war to develop.
Um, and, uh, you know, in the Vietnam war, it was, it was depicted as a police action. Um, the Korean war was expected to be pretty short, uh, U S victory at the start of it. Um, but, uh you know the events go in unexpected directions and, and part of the reason for that, um, if any of your listeners, our listeners have, have, have read Carl von Klauswitz or heard of him.
He's the great Prussian theorist about war. He always warns that War tends to spin out of control, it spirals. There are reprisals, passions, fear, anger, and it tends to spiral and ultimately destroy its purposes. And one of those ways it spirales is that as the costs of war go up, as the duration of war goes up, It tends to sap public support in democracy.
And so that's why if you're gonna have a discretionary war of choice, you need to build a lot of support in advance, have it very well, well grounded and then have really clear objectives, meet those objectives and then end it. And I think the classic example there or the two classic examples are, you know, number one, the second world war.
And then second, the first president Bush's Gulf War in 1991, where again, very, very clear objectives. Built support in Congress and at the UN, met those objectives and then ended the war, right? And this is, again, this is in a very different category.
Juravich: Here in Ohio, we had the notorious Kent State shootings amid the Vietnam War and protests of the war. That just is what always comes to mind whenever you think of Ohio and opposition to war. Was that a turning point in domestic support of the War? That was what was happening then, and then there was the shooting and there was a turning-point.
Rudesill: Well, certainly that played into it. The poll numbers were already going south on the Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese really did a lot of damage to public support in the United States. And it started to go from a war that was much longer and much larger than the public had expected to one which was now having very, very significant U.S. Casualties.
It's very interesting because military analysts will look at the Tet Offensive in 1967 and 1968 and say, well, you know, the United States and South Vietnam won that in a purely military sense. But the casualties were so high that it dramatically sapped public support of the United States.
And ultimately, President Johnson had to realize, you know, this war couldn't be won and he couldn't run for a second term. So again, that just kind of comes back to, you know, having clear objectives for what you're trying to do, having a clear plan to meet those objectives and understand you're waging war in the context of a democracy where the people are sovereign and people are gonna be maybe initially supportive if the support is built, but you know over time, they're gonna become skeptical of the costs unless there's a really, really powerful sense that the country's existence is actually in peril as it was during World War II.
Juravich: Do you feel that what happened at Kent State changed Ohioans specifically, their views of future wars and conflicts after that? Do you think that Ohioans really took that to heart, it happened here, and it had lasting impacts?
Rudesill: Well, I think it certainly did in Ohio and nationwide. But I think something also to keep in mind too is just the generational turnover. That was now 50 years plus ago. And most of our voters now were born since that time. And so I wonder how much that is kind of still having an impact on people.
And I think that the Kent State shooting will, you know, would probably be much more salient, you know, in the context of thinking about domestic deployment of force by the federal government. And if we see additional domestic deployments of force, be it ICE, the National Guard, active duty military, you know, In the coming months and years, I think that we'll probably get a lot of renewed focus on Kent State and what happened there.
Juravich: I mentioned the whole idea of rallying around the flag and having the United States be kind of like all for one and one for all in that kind of attitude. Did we see that in the beginning of Vietnam, at the beginning of Iraq, that we did see the rallying around the flags? Because it seemed missing from the beginning for this conflict.
Rudesill: Yeah, well, there are certainly more of it in but in the case of the Vietnam War and both of the Iraq Wars and in Vietnam and the second Iraq War, the 2003 Iraq War public support just fell apart.
The the first Gulf War in 1990 1991 was again different because president. George H.W. Bush built strong support for it and then had really, really discreet objectives in terms of evicting Iraq from Kuwait. And once that objective had been met, the war was over. And so it was very brief.
The objective was very, very clear to everybody in the public. And so really that first Gulf War as a discretionary war of choice, and we haven't had many in our country's history, but that's one of them. And that came out differently in terms of public support and in terms success of the military operation. Again, because of a clear military objective, strong public and legal support, and then rapid conclusion of the war once those objectives are met.
Juravich: Do you think in this conflict in Iran, if objectives were explained more clearly? I mean, have we gone too far? Is it already too much has happened? Or could the administration backtrack a little bit and kind of like, you know, make a speech, lay it out, explain where we're at, or is it too late?
Rudesill: You know, again, that's hard for me to speculate about that. I would just say looking at the polling numbers of this, it seems that we're seeing kind of a, you know, what I think statisticians would call a reversion to the mean, which is support on the Iran war is increasingly lining up just on the blue-red divide, like so many things are in our country.
The initial polls after President Trump started this war were a bit more scattered than that. But over time, that's what we're seeing. And so where we are right now in the country is that depending on the poll you read, the president has something, somewhere between the upper 30s and upper 40s of percent of support.
I think 41% is a number I'm seeing a lot. Support for the war is going in about the same place. And the president, he has majority opposition in terms of job performance. And, you know, you can look at that and just say like, oh, well, this is just another policy initiative and the president is doing what he wants to do and then we'll have elections and whatever.
You know, that's one view of it one could take. But I think another view would be war is not kind of a normal thing. And, to commit the country to an armed conflict, especially in this case where we are fighting the number one global state supporter of terrorism. That is something that implicates the interests of all Americans.
And you wouldn't necessarily want to have a war of choice like that, right, where it's only basically a minority faction of the United States, which supports it. I think that'd be the argument against just saying like, oh, this is just, you know, it's just regular presidential politics.
Juravich: Staying with us after the break is Dakota Rudesill, a professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law. And coming up, we're going to talk about how lawmakers and lawyers are seeing the conflict with Iran. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. The conflict with Iran has been ongoing for just over a month, and with conflicting reports coming out, it does not look like the war will stop any time soon. As the war goes, the public's approval continues to drop, but that's not the only approval that matters.
How do lawyers and lawmakers feel about this conflict? As the powers of the president continue to grow, What is the history of executing and initiating wars from the executive branch and how might this continue? Still with us is Dakota Rudesill, professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.
Thanks for being here today, professor. One of the reasons many Americans disapprove of the current conflict with Iran is the lack of approval from Congress to start it outlined in the power. So how is President Trump able to bypass Congress? You alluded to that a little bit earlier in our previous segment, but how, how, why didn't President Trump, you know, talk to Congress? Or should he have? Should he have, I guess.
Rudesill: Sure, sure. Well, you know, again, rather than trying to get between President Trump's ears and think about his motivations on that, let me just, I'll just briefly sketch out the constitutional framework here.
So basically there are three paths to the president having legal authority under the constitution to order the military to use force internationally. So one of them is Congress has authorized it. The framers gave Congress the power in Article 1 of the Constitution to declare war, and so Congress could declare war, or Congress could pass a regular statute, such as an authorization for the use of military force.
The Supreme Court has said that's constitutionally sufficient, right? So that's path number one. Congress has done neither of those things, not declared war, not passed a statute. The second path to presidential authority is the repel sudden attacks authority.
So at the constitutional convention, the framers talked about how the president as commander in chief of the federal armed forces would naturally have the ability. To repel a sudden attack on the United States. For example, the British attack from Canada, Spain attacks from the South, something like that.
There isn't time to get Congress together. So the president can just order the forces that are available to repels the sudden attack. Well, we've not had a sudden attacked from Iran. So that path is not available. The third path is basically use of force which does not amount to war in the constitutional sense.
Been long established the president can order the military to do things, use force, which are much less intense than a full discretionary war. So the question then is this a war? The administration sometimes says it's war, but then other times they've said it's not a war. The speaker of the House said it is not a War.
But I think that that's challenged on just the intensity of this. And so think about it this way. So imagine if on 9-11 Al-Qaeda, instead of hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Instead, Al-qaeda had killed the top layers of the US government, destroyed most of the U.S. Air Force, destroyed most to the U S Navy.
And three weeks later, Al Qaeda every single day was still pounding us and it pounded us more than 10,000 times. Would anybody say that that's not a war? Well, that's exactly what the US military operation is. So I think that that operations less than war path to legal authority isn't available. So. Just that's just to say, I think that this is the this is that this war is on extremely weak constitutional
Juravich: Well, they renamed the Department of Defense the Department Of War. So to call it not a war is kind of on us. To, you know, like that's kind of on the nose there, right? Okay. So the, what do you think about though? Cause you said this is on like, you know, wary constitutional framework here, but what do think this precedent is going to set for future presidencies?
Do you think that this you know, not going to Congress, the history of the War Powers Act. Is it setting a bad precedent right now? Is it sending a precedent at all? Or is this, is President Trump really, like, on his own in doing this?
Rudesill: Yeah, well, I think he is very much on his own in doing this. So the president is implicitly here invoking Article II authority of the president as commander in chief of the Federal Armed Forces and generally in charge of foreign affairs powers subject to law, of course, the rest of law.
And it's just really, really based on that. And again, not able to rely on the Repel Sudden Attack's authority that has been well understood since the founding. So I think it is, again, just a very, very weak constitutional basis for this. In terms of a precedent, I guess you could understand this one of two ways.
I think that the ways that President Trump and his supporters would like to understand this is that he's setting a new precedent now of the ability of the president. To have a discretionary war on his own authority. And basically maybe the idea is the president can initiate full war at any time at his discretion, except maybe then if Congress comes along and defunds it or stops it, something like that, or court somehow rules that it's illegal, which is highly unlikely.
I think a different view, a more skeptical view would be that it is a dramatic, revision of our constitutional understanding. After years of drift, of just kind of more and more latitude, Congress has given the executive branch to use force. This is a massive step ahead in terms of discretionary war.
And what we're going to end up with then is basically an imperial president who, as long as they're in office, they can have a war of any intensity that they want at any time, unless Congress somehow comes around and stops it. But that's just a different, I think that that's pretty clearly a different place than the framers were at.
Who understood that, again, Congress would have the power to declare war. President Washington was very, very clear in believing that you couldn't really have any sort of optional big use of force unless it was authorized by Congress. So I guess you could kind of understand it, you know, one of those two ways, right, in terms of precedent.
Juravich: You've written and discussed a lot about a larger secret law problem that we have in the United States. Can you elaborate on what it means and how it applies to the Iran conflict? What's the secret law of problem?
Rudesill: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, folks who have some gray hair like me may remember that at various points in the past couple decades, the public has been shocked to see revelation of something going on by the US government, usually involving surveillance or interrogation or some other military matter.
And behind it is a classified legal opinion. And so we've had these allegations that we have secret law in America. About 10 years ago, I sat down, I reviewed all the publicly available evidence. My conclusion is that secret law is a limited exception to our general rule in America that the law is published.
All three branches produce examples of it. And I think one of the most dangerous examples of it is when the executive branch writes a classified legal memo, which has legal force inside the executive branch, which really aggressively pushes ahead its legal authorities or even departs from the way that all of us understand the law, just reading it in black and white.
And by keeping it classified, Congress doesn't know about it, the public doesn't about it. Courts don't know it. And what's especially dangerous about that is that among the three branches of the federal government, the executive branch uniquely has the sword. Meaning the executive branches among the 3 has the unique ability to use force in the real world.
That's just domestic FBI operations or the military especially. And so when the executive ranch. Has the ability to secretly revise our understanding of the law and then act on that basis and then not tell anyone about it is massively problematic from the standpoint of a democracy.
And so I think that that's relevant to the Iran war in this sense, which is we have not seen released to the public a thorough explanation for why this war is legal under US law, under international law. And typically on anything, any sort of big deal matter, especially something which is of questionable legality, you're gonna see an opinion from the Department of Justice published on that. We haven't seen that here, which makes me wonder, did they write a memo and then classify it? And if they did that, why did they do that?
Juravich: So you're saying that related to Iran, there are secret memos out there, most likely, right? I don't know. Will we never know because they're secret?
Rudesill: Well, secret laws tend not to stay secret. People leak, right? We saw that. Folks might remember 12 years ago, Edward Snowden, he used to work for NSA, dumped out on the internet, tens of thousands of classified documents, including a whole bunch of secret ones, go back to the Bush administration in 2005, a classified surveillance program, which was blatantly illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth amendment.
A really weakly written memo from the early days after 9-11 was released, you know, people tend to leak this stuff because people come across these memos inside the executive branch. And, you now, if they feel like the public should know about it or the legal reasoning is just terrible, they tend to, you known, they give it to the press that can publish it under the First Amendment, they otherwise leak it.
So something may come out, but to be clear, I don't know if there's a classified legal memo at the Trump Justice Department, right? Explaining why this is legal and why, you know, legions of skeptics across the political spectrum are wrong that this is an unconstitutional war. I don't know, but this is the secrecy problem, right. You don't what you don't now.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Americans' reactions to wars with Dakota Rudesill, professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law. I am not very up on international law, but recently, President Trump has made threats to destroy Iran's power plants. He's talking about taking over the island where most of their power supply is. He's also mentioned their water supply. Is that something that he can do? I mean, that would be a way to end it. I mean it would send Iran into chaos to not have power, not have water, but talk to me about international law or what we're supposed to do. Yeah.
Rudesill: Yeah. Yeah. So yesterday, President Trump threatened to destroy basically the Iranian power grid, all their power generation capability. And he said possibly to their desalinization plants. So water is a problem in the Middle East. And so they take the salt out of the seawater in a lot of countries in the region.
And, so he's talking about destroying that, basically denying drinkable water to Iran. Uh definitely something that folks should be concerned about um from a moral standpoint and from a legal standpoint so generally under under international law the law of war the law of armed conflict um during an armed conflict enemy forces can be attacked um and the facilities that they're directly using um and and attacks cannot be directed against civilian targets or military forces, soldiers who are out of the fight because they're wounded or they're sick or shipwrecked or something like that.
A more difficult category is what are called dual use pieces of infrastructure, right? And so it's something that supports the military but it also supports non-combatants, civilians. Under some circumstances, they can be attacked. So for example, if the military is using a civilian bridge, right, or some other civilian thing, that has basically been brought into the fight and can be attacked.
Something like power is especially difficult. And the analysis there comes to the principle of law, which is called proportionality. So in any attack, even an attack against the enemy forces, the law demands, and this is both international law and it's incorporated into US law through the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
So it's hard law. The analysis has to be is the unintended harm to civilian persons or property is that small enough relative to the military gain that it's still proportional. And that is sometimes an imprecise calculation, but generally what you want to avoid is something where there is massive harm to civilians and other non-combatants, right?
And very limited military benefit, right, where those two things are out of whack. And when you're talking about the power grid, when you were talking about the water supply. The food supply, something like that. Alarm bells should be going off, right?
You couldn't plunge an entire nation of almost 100 million people into darkness with no water to put pressure on the military. I think a lot of lawyers would say that would be profoundly problematic. And what that gets back to are some of the purposes of the law of war, which is to reflect our moral principles, that we do not attack. Helpless people. We did not attack non-combatants. So I think that there needs to be some really, really focused attention, some really focused attention on that.
Juravich: So who enforces the laws of war? So if we, if the Trump administration does attack their power supply, once that happens, it's hard to go back. You can't rebuild a power plant if it's been attacked. So is there, would the United States end up in some sort of criminal case? I, yeah, who, who would take up that case?
Rudesill: Yeah, that's a, that that's an important piece of it. I mean, and on power plants, I mean you can rebuild them, right, but it can take a lot of time to like to repair or rebuild, right? Depending on how much how to destroy their same thing with desalinization plants and things like that.
On the enforcement question. So most enforcement of the law, be it domestic US law or international law when it comes to use of force happens because a military has a strong law of war program. It has strong norms. It has a sense of honor in the use of of course. And a culture where you're going to avoid getting close to any sort of situation where you might be violating the law of war, right?
Or doing something that is dishonorable. That's how most enforcement is. It is not through prosecutions or investigations. Where there are errors, U.S. Combatants who violate the law of war can be tried and have been tried under the UCMJ. In U.S. Courts, you can have potentially trial in international fora, or other countries could claim what's called universal jurisdiction to try offenses against the law of war.
That gets into just a really, really fraught zone, a really difficult zone. And so enforcement here is depending so much on the country itself, right, which has combatants. Um, I undertaken the use of force and what is so worrisome about this current administration is two things number one This president has in just time and again in terms of you know ice operations in terms Of downsizing the federal government in terms Uh use of course, you know this entire war is You know Overwhelmingly likely illegal right this president has shown the least commitment to the rule of law If any president I can think of That's number one.
And second, at the Pentagon, Secretary Hegseth has acted in a variety of ways to marginalize the lawyers, the judge advocate generals, the Jags. And he has spoken disdainfully of war. And his slogan for the Pentagon that he adopted was maximum lethality, not tepid legality. And so the rule of law culture at the pentagon has been dramatically weakened.
And so for all those reasons, I'm just worried that we're seeing. A lot of operations and orders, which are really in a questionable zone in terms of illegality or skating way over it, but we don't in our country anymore in the executive branch have the internal guardrails to stop that stuff.
Juravich: Just to end on, in the past and in past wars, we've talked about how America is viewed as spreading freedom, bringing democracy to authoritarian states, being the global protector. What do you think that view is now as the idea of spreading democracy, global protector?
Rudesill: Yeah, well, the United States has made a dramatic change. There's no two ways about it. And you look at polling data about attitudes by other countries toward the United States, what their government officials are saying. And look at what the Trump administration is saying. I mean, democracy promotion is no longer something that we do.
Some people associate that with the George W. Bush administration trying to spread democracy by force. But that is definitely not the only way the United States has tried to promote democracy. We've traditionally tried to do it in a whole variety of ways. Our commitment to the rule of law has become dramatically weakened both at home and abroad.
And in crushing USAID, which was an imperfect organization but did a lot to help starving people and sick people worldwide, that has had a major impact as well. And I think it's really, really clear that the reputation of the United States standing for the rule. For democracy, for basic human compassion, all of those things have been dramatically reduced.
And I think we need to think about that because there's no way that we can kill ourselves to security because that is, you know, there are just billions of people in the world. And as 9-11 taught us, and I was on Capitol Hill on 9- 11, I remember that so vividly, as 9 11 taught us in our world today that's so interconnected.
A small number of people who are aggrieved and angry can use high technology, the internet, airplanes, chemicals, whatever, right, to do horrific amounts of damage. And so we have, I would say that, traditionally throughout the last 60, 70 years, I think that most thoughtful people about foreign affairs would say, we have an immediate national security interest in everyday people worldwide thinking we're the good guys. And not becoming radicalized against us, but thinking we're the good guys. And right now we don't seem to be pumping out really any messages which line up with that.
Juravich: We've been talking with Dakota Rudesill, professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Rudesill: Always great. Thanks.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to hear about how veterans are feeling about the current conflict. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. The conflict in Iran has lasted for several weeks and public opinion is sharply divided. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 53% of voters oppose the war and 74% are against deploying members of the military into combat on the ground.
A generational gap has also emerged among veterans and service members, with older veterans citing a moral duty to intervene while younger. Generations express skepticism over the conflict's motives. How has the environment around the United States military shifted over the years, and how have Americans' opinions changed with it?
Joining us now, we have Bill Butler, retired Army Colonel and President of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, which is located here in downtown Columbus. Welcome to the show, Colonel Butler.
Bill Butler: Thanks for having me, Amy. Please call me Bill.
Juravich: I'll call you Bill. All right. So when you first heard about the strikes in Iran, what were your initial thoughts as someone who has led troops in the past? What did you think about this starting this conflict with Iran?
Butler: Yeah, so my two initial thoughts were, why are we doing this? What's in our national, vital national interests that we're going to start a war with the nation's state of Iran?
And then the second thought immediately was, OK, how does this end? Is this a week long thing, like back in June, a series of bombing strikes, or does it turn into something much larger like it is? And does it ultimately turn into boots on the ground like it did in Iran and Iraq and other places?
Juravich: Do you see parallels with those conflicts with Afghanistan and Iraq?
Butler: Oh, for sure. I mean, just the manner in which we've gone in, certainly. But there are also some, you could make the argument that is very different than Iraq and Afghanistan and the fact that we're not part of a coalition.
There was not a presentation and effort to create a. Large coalition of allies and partners to go in in support of us like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no administration leaders who went to the UN and lobbied and talked to the nation and talked the world on why this is necessary. It just didn't happen. So there are some parallels, but there are also some extreme differences.
Juravich: You work at a veterans museum, so you probably speak to veterans every day. How do current veterans that you have talked to feel about this conflict in Iran? Are they supportive? Do they wanna know more? What are you hearing?
Butler: So, you know, veterans are not a monolithic group. And so they run the gamut from, you know, the political spectrum. And so, they've got a variety of opinions.
I would say the combat veterans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Vietnam, they had the same reaction that I did. What's in our vital national interests? And how does this end? Because they were on the receiving end, so to speak, Uh.
You know, our nation's efforts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and they've got a lot of scar tissue just in terms of friends lost, time away from family, sacrifices, in some cases, you know debilitating injuries and illnesses that came as a result of their service to our country.
So yeah, the combat veterans are more skeptical. I would say the older veterans like you mentioned are skew more conservative so they're supportive of the effort, particularly if it doesn't involve boots on the ground and some sort of ground invasion or ground effort.
If it's just the bombing campaign, I think the older veterans are good with that, generally speaking. But, you know, we just this past Saturday had a Vietnam Veterans Day event. So we had, you know, tons of Vietnam veterans in the museum.
Juravich: Was this a topic of conversation for them?
Butler: A lot of people were, we weren't asking them about it, but it just came up as you're interacting with the veterans throughout the day. Why are we there? What are we doing? How does this end? Sort of thing.
Juravich: What are your thoughts on presidential powers? You know, the ability to declare war is in the hands of Congress, but multiple presidents have started military action without congressional approval, not just this administration, but in the past too. As someone who leads a veterans organization, what are your thought on who should lead the U.S. Into conflict?
Butler: So I think it's nuance, you know, you go all the way back to Harry Truman in the Korean War and Eisenhower in the Korea War, and there is no congressional approval, there is no declaration of war.
So since World War II, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt appealed to Congress to declare war against Japan, and then Germany declared war on us, since then that has not occurred. So you know I think that's probably eight administrations or nine administrations.
Juravich: Yeah, President Bush did it kind of in a sort of way, but yeah, he went to ask for money.
Butler: Right. There's no declaration. So it's not unusual. And, you know, I think Congress long ago has abdicated the responsibility to do that.
But there's got to be a balance with the ability of the administration, irrespective of who it is, to be able to respond to an existential threat to either U.S. Forces abroad or national interests. And I'm not in this instance that is, because it just hasn't been articulated to the American people.
Juravich: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we talked about that earlier in the show where there wasn't like a big rallying around the flag moment. There wasn't a big speech explaining this or just basically like talking about the American plan, the American dream, you know, the rallying around the like that was missing?
Butler: Oh, for sure. Yeah. And we certainly saw that in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, it happened to us with Afghanistan with the September 11th attacks and then with Iraq there's a concerted effort to build that support in the nation and build that support within the greater group of nations nationally.
Juravich: I mean even if it was wrong, we saw the mission accomplished banner, we had the visuals of the rallying. For sure.
Butler: For sure. And then, you know, you can, you know, hindsight's always 20-20, and you certainly look back and say, you know the intelligence was faulty, but intelligence is never precise and never 100% accurate.
Juravich: Do you think that veterans that you talk to feel like that piece is missing? Because I mean, veterans tend to be, I'm guessing here, but veterans tend be very patriotic, right? For sure. So are they missing that patriotic element in this conflict?
Butler: They are, and the other thing to keep in mind too, Amy, is you've got, the military's becoming much of a family business, so multi-generations of men and women serve, because their parents or their grandparents or their aunts and uncles did, so they've got that connection.
So because of that, I just know a lot of people that I served with have got their kids over in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and other places, so there's. There's this sense of dread on, okay, what is going to happen?
Yeah, we've got air superiority and air dominance, but the Iranians, IRGC has got precise, precision ammunitions with the drone technology that they have, which is really cheap to build, very capable, very lethal.
We saw that with the E3 aircraft that were destroyed, but we've suffered over 300 casualties to date and 13 dead. Six from the flight mishap, and then seven as a direct result of the Iranian drones.
So they're a lethal enemy and they've got a tremendous capability that they've been able to build up over the past 20 years or so to, they've seen, they're smart. They've watched us in Iraq. They've watch us in Afghanistan, Venezuela, certainly, and they built their military response based on what we've been doing. What they perceive as our weaknesses.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the public's perception of war with Bill Butler, retired army colonel and president of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. Veterans returning home from World War II were greeted differently than those returning home Vietnam. And things were different with Iraq and Afghanistan as well because those wars went on for so long. When you think about how veterans are viewed by the American public, what do you think the perception is now?
Butler: So I think the American public lionizes veterans, and that can be good and bad. And it maybe unintentionally places a barrier between the general public and the American military. And I think that's not healthy.
We've got an all-volunteer force. It's very professional, very capable. They're very good at what they do and what we have done. But, the American public is removed. Generally from the conflict, from the friction, from the sacrifice, and from the debate on whether or not we should send our young men and women into harm's way to do our nation's bidding.
And I think that's critical for a healthy republic to be able to have those debates and not just, you know, if your biggest tool in the toolbox is a hammer, you're always going to use it. And I feel that that's one of the things that's happening with multiple administrations is we'll have the military deal with this instead of diplomacy.
And diplomacy is hard and it's a lot of back and forth and it a lot discussions and debate. And it takes a long time and it takes a lot effort, but we've got to have that patience as a country to get what's in our best interests achieved as well as what's for the other person or other nation that we're debating with.
Juravich: I've talked in the past about your organization, the National Veterans Memorial Museum, and a part of the reason it exists is for veterans to have a place to come, you know? But also, you want the general American public, non-veterans, to come and learn more about veterans.
I mean, that's your goal. So what, if they would come to the museum while this conflict with Iran is going on. You know, what do you want them to learn as they think about, you know whether or not we end up with ground combat in Iran or not, but if they come to your museum, what do want them learn about the veteran perspective?
Butler: You know, I would say the biggest thing we want them to learn for the veteran perspective is they're everyday men and women who are serving our country and have since the founding of our nation.
And you've got some incredible talent and treasure that has done something that very few Americans do, and that's serve a cause greater than themselves and make tremendous sacrifices. Ultimately, they could sacrifice their life or come back. You know, with horrific injuries or having been maimed.
But they're doing it for the greater good. They're doing for the fellow Americans. They're for the men and women that they serve with. And they've got, you know families back home that are also enduring that sacrifice as well.
Juravich: One of your tag lines on your website is, see courage up close. Yeah, tell me more about that courage, that sense of duty, no matter the conflict, even this one that may be questionable with Iran. Talk to me about that, the courage.
Butler: So you've got men and women in our military who are standing up for the little guys, so to speak. The Afghan people, the Iraqi people, Vietnamese people, as we, the nation, are employing them on these military operations.
And you see sacrifice, which can just be very inspirational in terms of they're willing to sacrifice their lives for their friends. And you can see that in a number of the alcoves that we have and a lot of the video recordings you'll see and hear that as guys and gals are talking about their experience downrange overseas and how traumatic it is.
But then also the brotherhood and sisterhood of service and how those bonds of service are so strong. You can't find those in any other profession in the world but the profession of the military, where you've got this. You know, sense of service, a sense of purpose, you've got this sacrifice that you're making, and you're truly, literally willing to give your life for the buddy on your left and right.
Juravich: Tell me about the Memorial Museum five years from now, 10 years from, will members of the military who are a part of this conflict in Iran, will they be in your museum? What constitutes a war and a veteran? When do you call it that?
Butler: Well, you know, there's something, we've got a historic timeline, 1775 through the end of Afghanistan. So there are some things missing on that timeline, like the Cold War is just kind of glossed over, and I think that's certainly not intentional in something that we need to address and rectify, but short of building a bigger building and having a bigger timeline, And there's going to have to be some evergreen, if you will, kind of ... Portions of the timeline that talk about current operations.
And we can do that through, you know, some of the programs that we have and the guests that we bring in. You know, this past Saturday, we had our Vietnam Veterans Day welcome home ceremony. We're proud to have two guest speakers that talked about their experience, not in Vietnam because they weren't veterans, but they wrote about veterans. One was a New York Times bestselling author, Will Haged.
Juravich: I interviewed him about that.
Butler: Yeah, who releases great book and then Matthew Modine who's depicted military members in several of the movies that he's done He's most famous for that's your
Juravich: That's your "Full Metal Jacket" Exhibit, yeah, alright.
Butler: You know, great storytellers who, you know, not all veterans are either willing to share their story or able to, but we've got so many, you know, members of the film industry and authors who do a tremendous job.
So part of that is incumbent upon us to bring in those great storytelers to share the interviews that they've done through their work and for their work.
Juravich: I want to thank you so much for your time today. We've been talking with Bill Butler, retired Army Colonel and president of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, which is located right here in downtown Columbus. Thanks for your time. Thanks so much. Much, Amy. This has been All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.