This Isn’t the Norm. It’s the Reality.
Signals, silence, and the constitutional duty to vote before war.
Last night was the State of the Union.
I wasn’t watching for the applause lines—although do note, the standing ovations as Donald Trump vilified immigrants were disturbing, and I do not see an end to DHS’s victimization of Americans until the power structure flips after the midterms.
I was particularly waiting to hear what the president would say about Iran, and it took more than ninety minutes to get there.
Earlier in the day, the Gang of Eight met. If you’ve spent time around national security decisions, you know that meetings like that—paired with equipment movements and weapons repositioning—aren’t random. They are signals of what is about to come.
That signal right now: we are on the brink of war unless there is a diplomatic breakthrough.
Congress—especially Democrats—should be demanding a vote under the War Powers Resolution before this country drifts into another Middle East conflict with no clearly articulated long-term strategy. Democrats breaking off in favor of another ill-guided war must be called out and held to account.
This may not be normal.
But it is reality.
I remember that not long after I arrived in Afghanistan in 2016, Donald Trump was first elected president. It was a kick in the gut, and for the first time in my career, I felt trapped. I remember standing in the doorway of my headquarters office at Hamid Karzai International Airport, looking out at the hills beyond the perimeter and thinking, I’m stuck here.
Weeks turned into months, and months into more than a year of foreign partners and troops asking me what was happening to the United States—especially in light of Trump’s attacks on our very institution, NATO. We continued to break norm after norm without clear answers.
What was happening wasn’t normal.
But it was reality.
And so we picked up our rifles and kept going.
Last night, during the State of the Union, roughly half of Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate skipped the address altogether—a much larger absence than in years past that underscores just how divided this moment has become.
Many said it was a choice not to legitimize the actions of Trump, a president elected not once on Democrats’ watch, but twice.
I thought about the Sailors and Marines on the USS Ford right now. Two extensions at sea. Maintenance pushed to the brink. Service members lining up just to use the bathroom.
I thought about the Airmen moving F-22s to Israel as the whole world watches the timing.
They don’t get to boycott a political juggernaut that has been building for years.
A juggernaut that includes unsettled scores with Iran, for deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars that began under Bush and were carried forward under Obama. I thought about the holes we left, conflict after conflict, with no real plan beyond the initial phases of action. Failures of COIN that traumatized entire generations of our military, including mine.
And I thought about the women I met in Afghanistan, now part of a society that isn’t even allowed to seek an education under Taliban rule. To show them freedom and then to only let it be stripped away by abandonment—it’s the cruelty.
Again, not the norm.
But their reality.
Boycotting an event in a moment is one thing. But we cannot continue to boycott reality.
Norms are changing. Some of them may never come back.
It’s the same challenge we face when trying to mobilize voters. Many already see both parties as inherently worthless. As having broken with norms long ago. Boycotts turn into disengagement. And disengagement allows the worst actors to consolidate control.
If boycotting last night was the choice, then today needs to be clear: we cannot start another forever war.
Not like this—not without proper approval from Congress, not without a defined plan and strategy, and not without the support of the majority of the American people.
This isn’t the norm.
But it is our reality.
And that reality does not care whether we are comfortable, offended, or tired.
If this country moves closer to war, Congress must vote. Out loud. On the record.
Silence is not a choice, no matter the form.