On Saturday night, as news unfolded of the strikes on Iran, I began thinking about my generation’s experience with war. I had friends who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and although they came home, thousands did not. Like many, I am praying today’s leaders have learned the lessons where previous generations fell short.
Three years after America went to war with Iraq, I began graduate school studying Middle Eastern politics and working as research assistant on a faculty book on the Iraq War — a conflict that left an indelible mark on American foreign policy and a generation of Americans, including me.
America is engaging militarily in the Middle East again. But unlike in 2003, this moment is being shaped by Generation X. And Gen X remembers how the Iraq War damaged America’s credibility abroad and trust at home.
Americans are wary of being pulled into another war in the Middle East. A YouGov poll this month shows only 16% of Americans support U.S. military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Yet a Harris-Harvard poll a week or so earlier found 85% of Americans don’t want Iran to get or develop a nuclear weapon. Americans want Iran’s nuclear capabilities eliminated, but not if it means another costly, drawn-out war like Iraq.
There’s only one voice in the president’s ear right now with a generational perspective that could steady an impulsive administration: Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Florida.
Rubio is a traditional foreign policy realist, a classical conservative surrounded by other advisers who range from isolationist to those skeptical of military intervention. His worldview was not shaped by Vietnam, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s, but by the failures of Iraq. And that matters.
Rubio has seen the cost of open-ended military endeavors in the Middle East and the difference between swift action with clear objectives and a mission creep that turned Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan into America’s longest conflict.
The generational contrast is real. When Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, he made the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq based on what turned out to be bad intelligence. A month later, we invaded Iraq without an exit strategy and with a lack of cultural understanding. In the end, the result was thousands of American lives lost, trillions of dollars spent and extremist organizations filling the power vacuum throughout the region.
Saturday’s actions were different. U.S. troops weren’t deployed, and the objective was clear: neutralize Iran’s nuclear capabilities, not overthrow the government. On CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Rubio said, “We have achieved our objectives. We’re ready to negotiate this in a peaceful, diplomatic way.” His comments signal a narrow focus that was largely absent when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
The real test is how America — and Rubio — handles what comes next. Can Rubio limit mission creep? And will he know when the mission is accomplished?
There are two important points that will help give Rubio room to act with restraint: There’s no talk of putting troops on the ground so far. And Rubio knows there is an America First isolationism element rising in the GOP.
We can’t let the nightmares of Iraq paralyze us when action is necessary. Americans are understandably anxious. But this time, we have a chance to do things differently — and better. If Rubio can guide the administration with moral clarity and principled diplomacy, history will remember him not only as the first Gen X secretary of state, but also as the one who got it right when it mattered.
