For some families who gathered this weekend at Fort Benning in Georgia, the past few days have served as a solemn reminder of the unsettling emotions military service can bring. On Friday, a group of Army enlistees graduated from basic training. On Saturday, President Trump bombed Iran. On Sunday, service members and their loved ones pondered an uncertain future.
“People can lose their life, so I’m worried,” said Michele Bixby, 24, of upstate New York, whose brother had just graduated. “But it’s what he wanted to do; it’s what he loves to do. He’s going to move forward with it no matter what.”
One day after the administration announced it had carried out airstrikes at three nuclear sites in Iran, the mood in some communities around military bases on U.S. soil varied from firm support to bitter disagreement. But one sentiment stood out among those interviewed: concern for the safety of America’s troops everywhere.
No one knows how the strikes on Iran could affect service members. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, emphasized on Sunday that the administration did not want an open-ended war. But Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate, and U.S. military installations in the Middle East, with more than 40,000 active-duty troops and civilians employed by the Pentagon, are already potential targets.
That reality, along with the potential repercussions for the entire military, was on the minds of many people around U.S. bases at home, even as service members accepted that reality as part of the job.
“A lot of the families around here are quickly realizing this is a real threat; this is something we need to be worried about,” said Meghan Gilles, 37, a self-described military brat who works in the Army Reserve’s human resources division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, a training site and home to the 101st Airborne Division.
At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Blake Carlson, a 23-year-old Army National Guard combat medic who was visiting from Austin, Texas, said that he could be deployed. “It’s what I signed up for,” he said. “If I have to, I’ll do it.” But his mother and brother hoped the country would not be dragged into the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Some people who were interviewed stood by Mr. Trump and agreed with his assertions that the targeted bombings were unlikely to lead to a wider conflict. Mr. Carlson’s mother, Tonya Carlson, said she hoped the attack would force Iran to negotiate with the United States.
Others stood by Mr. Trump’s statement that Iran posed an imminent threat — a point that contradicts recent national security assessments. “Iran doesn’t need to have nuclear weapons, for sure,” said Tony Saluzzo, 72, a former combat engineer who served in the U.S. offensive against Iraq and lives near Fort Campbell.
James Arthur, a 42-year-old retired Coast Guard captain who lives north of Tampa, Fla., and was visiting the Air Force Armament Museum at the Eglin base, said that the Iran airstrikes happened “about two decades too late.”
Other former service members castigated Mr. Trump for bombing Iran without congressional approval. The Constitution’s framers included language to ensure that wars would not be entered rashly, said Paul Oyler, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who lives near the Naval Air Station Lemoore in California, where he was based while on active duty.
He said he would have agreed with the airstrikes if there were a proven, credible threat to the region, but “I don’t have any reason to believe that Iran was in possession of actual nuclear weapons.”
Denver Thiery, 30, who works on military maintenance contracts and lives in Trenton, Ky., near Fort Campbell, said he would remain firmly behind Mr. Trump. But he also acknowledged that it was difficult to know exactly what capabilities Iran possessed.
“I don’t know the truth of what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know if they really have nuclear warheads or not. I don’t know what I can support anymore.”
Ms. Gilles, the reservist, whose father is a veteran and whose husband is an active-duty serviceman, was troubled by the decision to edge the country to war at the very moment the government was cutting funding for Veterans Affairs.
The administration is taking away a lot of benefits for veterans and “then just sending them off again to be the world police,” Ms. Gilles said.
If the current conflict worsens, military members and veterans said, they would put aside their disagreements over Mr. Trump and support one another. But one veteran lamented what he said such a scenario would ultimately mean.
“I learned from my time on active duty that war is devastating,” Mr. Oyler said.
John Ismay contributed reporting.
Katie Benner is a correspondent writing primarily about large institutions that shape American life.
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