Iraq war veteran Paul Rieckhoff told MS NOW that he is catching War on Terrorism vibes from President Donald Trump’s recent invasion of Venezuela.
When asked by MS NOW anchor Katy Tur on Thursday how young people are viewing Trump’s invasion and claim of Venezuela’s oil assets, the founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said they’re expecting it "to suck.”
“They know what it's like and … they know their friends could die and come home wounded and their families will be destroyed forever,” said Rieckhoff. “This sounds like forever war 2.0. That's what we called [the War on Terrorism] after 9/11. We were in Afghanistan for 20 years.”
Rieckhoff said many of the major supporters of the invasion on social media and in press conferences have no personal skin in the game when it comes to battlefield danger.
“Everybody thinks that wars are easy and clean until they start, especially people who haven't fought them. And they're talking a lot about the return on investment and talking about what we're going to get [out of Venezuela]. Nobody's talking about what it's going to cost,” said Reickhoff. “How many American lives is it worth to get that crude oil? How many lives are we willing to give every year? Nobody's putting up their own kids. Barron Trump certainly isn't joining the military, and nobody's talking about what is actually going to happen to human beings.”
President Donald Trump, while pressing the invasion, personally avoided the Vietnam War in his youth thanks to numerous health deferments courtesy of his father and a ‘fake injury’ validated by a family doctor, according to reports.
Rieckhoff said this absence of personal danger from the president’s administration and his social media supporters indicated a whole new legion of safe, comfortable armchair warriors beating the drum for the Iraq War decades ago.
“There's a rise of a new generation of chickenhawks,” Rieckoff said. “It reminds me of 2003, 2004 and people who think war is going to be clean and easy. … [T]his is very early. I was on the ground in Iraq when people were calling it ‘mission accomplished.’ And I was still there when the insurgency rose.”
See the video below.