From ICE to Iran, veterans are challenging US militarism 

This article From ICE to Iran, veterans are challenging US militarism  was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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One hundred fifty people holding tulips stand in formation on the marble floor of the Cannon House Office Building, until Capitol Police arrest over a third of them and remove them in cuffs. 

Maybe you saw an image of these veterans with their flowers — the red tulips that are an Iranian national symbol honoring martyrs. Perhaps you saw a photo of a disabled veteran’s wrists being handcuffed while leaning on a cane. You may have caught a video where a mother or a partner of a deployed soldier spoke about wanting their loved one back from this unconscionable war.  

When 66 protesters from a coalition of veteran and military family organizations were arrested on April 20, these images went viral worldwide. This attests to not only the specific weight given to veterans who speak out against wars, but also the deep hunger to see any kind of tangible action against the United States and Israel’s profoundly unpopular war with Iran.

One of those arrested was Katie Chorbak, president of 50501 Veterans, which organizes more than 2,000 members into policy fights, nonviolent direct action and sustained advocacy. Chorbak, a fifth-generation combat veteran, chose to bring her concerns directly to lawmakers out of the belief that veterans have a “responsibility to speak plainly” when the country is moving toward war without transparency or congressional debate.

“Veterans showing up in that space matters because we understand the realities of war beyond headlines and talking points,” Chorbak said. 

Despite decades of demonization of Iran by U.S. politicians, amplified by mainstream media, Trump’s war on Iran was met with immediate disfavor in March (a Reuters poll found that only 27 percent of voters approved of the initial strikes). Still, there has been little substantive resistance in Congress and relative quiet in the streets of cities that saw record-breaking protests against President George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s.  

Yet, over these last 20 years, veterans never stopped organizing against U.S. wars and militarism. The organizers of the April 20 action — About Face Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, 50501 Veterans, the Center on Conscience and War, Military Families Speak Out and others — are building antiwar veteran and service member leadership, offering a vision of how we could end this country’s marriage to reckless, crushing militarism.

Where did this come from?

GI resistance is the tradition, dating back to the Revolutionary War, of American soldiers choosing to stand on their conscience and withdraw their consent to carry out the orders of commanding officers. The spectrum of resistance has encompassed the Vietnam War era’s more visible draft dodging and widespread disobedience in the ranks, and the quiet, mostly unseen refusal of soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to execute civilians, load their guns, carry out missions, report for duty or even to deploy. 

Now, military resistance to the war on Iran is beginning to take publicly visible forms. Hundreds of complaints were filed by troops in every branch of the military when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a Christian nationalist, directed his commanders to inform their units that the Iran War is a holy war anointed by Jesus. And in the theater of war, service members whose labor enables the war machine can always find ways to clog the gears (sometimes literally). Rumors abounded of sailors clogging toilets and starting a fire on the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, which had to retreat for repairs in March.

Public acts of refusal are vital to building a movement. Many soldiers can’t imagine refusing orders or deployment until they see someone else doing it. But courage is contagious, and an opportunity to join a collective action can offer the necessary bridge to take that risk. 

Antiwar groups offer two core ingredients to transform spontaneous individual acts of refusal into a movement: visibility and access to support. Kelly Dougherty, who co-founded About Face in 2004 after returning from a year in Iraq in the Army National Guard, now serves as the counseling director for the Center on Conscience and War, or CCW, supporting service members seeking separation from the military, information about their rights or conscientious objector status. Dougherty says that while the Iran War has prompted a recent surge in calls to CCW’s hotline, “most service members I speak to have been questioning the system of war and whether or not they can morally participate in it for months or years.”

About Face has carried the banner of supporting GI resistance since its founding by Iraq War veterans with the support of seasoned organizers from Veterans for Peace. The group launched a Right to Refuse campaign after the 2024 election to bring renewed attention to the long tradition of refusal of illegal and immoral orders. To get the word out, Right to Refuse uses visibility efforts, direct actions, social media, on-the-ground outreach and word of mouth. An encrypted support form allows for anonymous inquiries. The campaign works in tandem with the GI Rights Hotline, which has fielded calls from active duty questioners and emerging conscientious objectors since 1994.

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What happens when soldiers stop believing in war?

As mainstream media conglomerates continue to shift rightward, so grows the importance of direct actions that alert soldiers to their options, as well as pressuring elected officials.  This is why the CCW chose to have its executive director Mike Prysner risk arrest in the April 20 action. “Most people in the military aren’t familiar with their right to seek discharge as a conscientious objector,” Dougherty said. “We wanted to let service members know that if they are experiencing a moral crisis because they cannot, in good conscience, participate in war, that they can file for conscientious objector status and there is an organization that will support them every step of the way.” 

GI resistance has power because war requires obedient soldiers. But active duty service members’ opportunities to make direct impacts are shrinking as war becomes increasingly outsourced and automated. Remote-controlled weaponry is taking over from real humans (often referred to as “boots on the ground,” underlining the nature of using youngsters as cannon fodder). Perhaps the most concerning trajectory is the trend of replacing decision makers with AI that can deploy and direct weaponry, as seen with Israel pioneering a shocking rate of mass death in Gaza with their Lavender and Where’s Daddy programs. These trends make the launch of this war on Iran a critically important window for supporting GI resistance before complete control over mass killing is in the hands of the ruling class and their machines. 

Work stoppage or interference by active duty military can slow or impair the war machine, but this alone may not end the war on Iran. There are more ways in which antiwar service members and veterans can leverage their social position not only as workers, but as symbols. Their voices on military matters have weight both with elected officials and the general public. They have the platform to challenge the myths of morality, necessity and infallibility in which the warhawks wrap their armies and wars. As they increase the unreliability of the armed forces, they can also decrease public confidence in how the troops are being used. Both resistance and public opposition are key toward ending not only a specific war, but tearing up the blank checks for endless wars at home and abroad. 

Veterans rising to meet the moment 

Founded as Iraq Veterans Against the War, About Face has expanded from opposing the war on Iraq to a deeper critique of militarism, as new members joined over the years who had participated in many different facets of the so-called Global War on Terror. Its opposition to the war on Iran is part of a broader recent effort to challenge the U.S.-Israeli wars for regional dominance, resource control and global positioning. 

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After Oct. 7, 2023, About Face welcomed hundreds of new members who were moved to organize with other veterans in solidarity with Palestine. To harness that energy, they immediately formed Veterans for Ceasefire, whose first of many direct actions was a sit-in on Nov. 9, 2023 in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s office. Eight members participated in the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla. 

In addition to challenging U.S. aggression overseas, veterans have also become important voices for demilitarization of the homefront. In the summer of 2020, when troops were turned against U.S. civilians in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police, About Face reached out to National Guard members, encouraging them “Stand Down for Black Lives” by refusing mobilization against racial justice protesters. 

Challenging militarism at home — and connecting it to wars abroad — has become even more crucial in a time of rising authoritarianism. “Right to Refuse was definitely created with Project 2025 in mind and what was promised in that document about domestic use of the military to enforce their authoritarian agenda,” said Matt Howard, interim national organizing director of About Face. 

Sure enough, ICE surges in 2025 saw the use of military forces to quell civil dissent and carry out race-based purges. The National Guard occupied cities, while the Department of Defense offered bases, staging areas and logistical support for mass detentions. Anti-ICE resistance also faced the kind of intensified surveillance and data collection tested in the killing fields of U.S.-Israeli wars abroad.

Tapping into the organic dissent in the ranks is a particular gift of the Right to Refuse campaign. Billboards facing the main gates of North Carolina’s biggest military installations appeared in September 2025 announcing a website titled NotWhatYouSignedUpFor.org (a joint visibility campaign of Win Without War and About Face). When thousands of active duty Airborne troops (a cold-weather division from Alaska) and military police were placed on standby for Department of Homeland Security support, including a 500-person brigade from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a billboard at the main gate greeted them with, “Did you go Airborne just to pull security for ICE?” Marines entering Camp Lejeune saw “Not what you signed up for? You have options.” 

In U.S. cities experiencing paramilitary occupation from DHS forces, U.S. military veterans found opportunities to demilitarize the skills they brought home and apply them to justice, protection and liberation. A delegation of  About Face members traveled to Minneapolis in February to join local members and other community organizations in building a grassroots response to the escalation of ICE violence. 

Additionally, About Face’s Monitoring and Analysis of Military and Border Operations, or MAMBO, project uses open source intelligence gathering to analyze and map domestic deployments of military and DHS forces, offering usable reports to community groups. Some members of About Face and its close partner Veterans For Peace provide security for local actions and community events, and train and mentor emerging movement security practitioners, both civilian and veteran. This is a radical revisioning of what security can be when seen through a lens of demilitarization — neighbors keeping each other safe. 

Alongside the DHS and National Guard occupation of U.S. cities, the impacts of the war economy and continued cuts to social spending have provided many opportunities for action. Last Veterans’ Day, About Face organized a Vets Say No War on Our Cities march in major cities including those dealing with ICE occupation like Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Washington, D.C. and Memphis. The message they shared was: “We will not allow attacks on our neighbors, or military occupation of our cities and deadly cuts on vital services to be normalized.”

On March 19, the 23rd anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, About Face coordinated national visits to senators to push for a repeal of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that opened the door to the “forever wars,” and for a vote against further supplemental military spending. A couple days later, members joined the Nuestra América relief convoy to Cuba, bringing supplies and challenging Trump’s saber-rattling. 

About Face has also been incubating Veterans Against Fascism, a politically diverse coalition of vets united behind the call for No ICE, No War, No Cuts. “Fascism is everywhere, spread throughout the entire government. We have a responsibility to make it grind to a halt,” explained Joseph Funk, a member of About Face and leader in Veterans Against Fascism. “That means we have to defeat it anywhere it wants to exercise its power. That might look like opposing war and international violence, and that might look like standing against federal goons hunting children. It will probably look like a lot of things in the future.”

Winning public opinion

The Trump regime is not attempting to manufacture approval or even consent for its wars, but they are fighting on the narrative and cultural fronts. Nonpartisan organizations like About Face, which has challenged U.S.-led wars under every administration for the last 20 years and is not scared of calling out Democratic leaders, are laying a critical foundation. Those of us who remember Obama’s presidential victory on a platform of ending Bush’s wars, and the subsequent abdication of the forces who might have pushed him to follow through, know we need an antimilitarist movement bigger than opposition to Trump’s caricatured shock and awe. 

“Despite the fact that both parties have had a shitty track record on war and militarism, in the last 10 years MAGA has claimed to be the true antiwar standard-bearer,” Howard said. “We are in a moment where the betrayal of Trump’s base is really clear. They thought they voted in a peace time president and are finding out it was another empty talking point. For movements who have been committed to an antiwar politic, no matter who was in office, there is an opportunity to use our credibility to undermine authoritarianism and contest for people who are waking up.”

The good news: There is leadership and vision. Antiwar veterans are increasing their ranks, building collective power in campaigns and coalitions, and taking strategic aim at multiple pillars of the war machine. 

“Veterans can help focus public energy into concrete demands,” said Katie Chorbak, from 50501 Veterans. “If opposition is going to be effective, it has to be organized, informed and sustained. Veterans can help anchor that effort. What is needed right now is seriousness, discipline and sustained engagement. Change rarely happens because people are upset for a week. It happens when people stay organized long enough to matter.”

This article From ICE to Iran, veterans are challenging US militarism  was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/05/antiwar-veterans-against-iran-war-ice/