Marine vet calls on Americans to resist Trump’s 'incompetence'

U.S. President Donald Trump salutes during the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 25, 2026.

According to John Keker, who served and was injured as an infantry platoon commander during the Vietnam War, it has been a difficult year to hold his usual Memorial Day remembrance due to what he calls President Donald Trump’s “reckless misuse of the military.”

“As the Trump administration slashes Department of Veterans Affairs services and fires principled military leaders, we are seeing it commit the same mistakes and incompetence that got us deployed in forever wars going back to Vietnam,” writes Keker in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Trump, who famously avoided military service in Vietnam thanks to five deferments, has started a war in Iran without input from Congress or serious public discussion, and it’s clear he didn’t plan for the inevitable backlash. It is a war of choice with no clear objective, no carefully mapped-out strategy, and an ever-shifting exit plan. As almost every veteran knows, war should always be the last resort, not the first.”

This war, says Keker, was launched with a confusing lack of foresight. For example, Trump “did not seem to comprehend the likelihood of the Strait of Hormuz being shut down,” even though it was the likely outcome suggested by his top advisors. What’s more, Trump’s actions have killed thousands, including a strike on a girls’ school that killed over 100 students, which “makes little sense given that Trump’s initial justification for launching the war was to help the people of Iran.”

All of this, says Keker, is part of a “larger pattern” of military abuse.

“Since early last year,” he explains, “Trump has expanded military operations abroad without meaningful congressional oversight or public debate. He has approved bombings in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela, the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. He has used the military in American cities to deal with emergencies that don’t exist. He tries to politicize our military to fight battles against Americans whom he calls ‘the enemy within.’ He told a gathering of high-ranking officers at the Quantico Marine Corps Base ‘we should use some of these dangerous cities’ — specifically Democratic-run ones — ‘as training grounds for our military.’”

Keker says this all feeds into Trump’s attempt to “put himself above the law,” an effort Keker says Americans must and can “resist.”

“I have faith in the will of the American people to push back against autocrats,” he asserts. “The resistance in Minneapolis to Trump’s deployment of immigration agents is a good example. We should all insist that Congress reclaim its power over the use of force domestically and in war abroad, support state and local leaders who stand up to Trump and urge the military to stay loyal to the Constitution by refusing illegal orders.”

It is up to those who have served in the military, he says, to push back.

“Veterans who risked their lives in combat have a lifelong commitment to protect our community and our country,” Keker concludes. “We know better than anyone the tremendous human and financial cost of war, and we must call out and oppose the misuse of the military. We need to lead the resistance.”

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