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President Donald Trump used the National Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday to defend his war against Iran, telling an audience of veterans and their families that the United States had already won it and the only open question was “when do we want to end it.”
Speaking in the cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater, Trump inserted his partisan remarks at the end of his speech after devoting most of them to commemorating the service of America’s veterans.
“America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war on the United States since 1979. This should have been resolved long ago,” Trump said.
“It’s about time someone fought back. We all fought back. We fought back, and we fought back seriously, and we won. It’s just a question of when we want to end it. We want to make sure we have a total victory, not a 93 percent victory.”
That speech came eight days after voters ceded control of both houses of Congress to Democrats in an election that Trump himself said was partly shaped by the war. About six in 10 voters said in the AP election day survey that the decision to use military force against Iran was the wrong one.
Trump, who unlike Vice President JD Vance did not serve in the military, made the argument by introducing Dale Garner, a Marine veteran who survived the 1983 bombing of the Beirut barracks by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, an attack that killed 241 U.S. service members. Garner, the president said, was “a veteran who reminds us why this mission is truly important.” After describing Garner’s collapsed lung, broken back and burns, Trump asked him to stand. “You look good, Dale. He looks good. A nice guy. What’s going on here?” he said.
He then gave his own version of the current conflict. “We began our operations against Iran seven months ago, of which only a few weeks were hard fighting. We lost 18 beautiful souls,” Trump said, referring to losses suffered by American forces in the days after the start of American strikes against Iran on February 28.
The president said the war would be over “soon,” as he has repeatedly said since the spring, without providing any evidence to support the claim.
“It will take them 25 years to rebuild what we destroyed, and I hope we don’t have to destroy this country again,” he added.
Standing steps from the graves of Americans killed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump listed the length and death toll of each of those wars and said the country “got very little out of those wars.” He said Korea lasted four years; the fighting took place there from 1950 to 1953.
He compared these wars with the U.S. operation in Venezuela to overthrow dictator Nicolas Maduro last January, which he said was won “in 48 minutes,” while continuing his efforts to turn that action into a “war” that his administration had “won” and boasting of the petrodollars the United States allegedly reaped through privileged access to Venezuelan oil.
“We’re taking billions and billions of dollars out of oil and all sorts of other things. We’ll be hundreds of billions very soon,” Trump told the crowd. “No one has ever seen anything like this, and we have already paid the price of war many, many times.”
“To the victor belongs the spoils, they said,” he added. “But you can repeat it with us under this leadership.”
Toward the end of his speech, Trump turned to the 250-foot golden arch his administration plans to build between the Lincoln Memorial and the cemetery where he was speaking.
“Soon we are going to dedicate a magnificent triumphal arch to our veterans, and it will be in honor of our great veterans and our great armies,” he said. “They’ve been waiting for this for 200 years.”
The proposed arch has drawn criticism from veterans groups and environmental advocates who say it would destroy the iconic sightline between Arlington and the Lincoln Memorial and impede traffic between Virginia and Washington, D.C. on the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled last week that there would be a 14-day pause in construction of the arch, but she is currently considering a longer-term delay. His decision followed an 8-4 vote by the National Capital Planning Commission approving the project.
The temporary order is part of a lawsuit filed by veterans groups as well as the governments of Maryland and Virginia and rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the oversized structure is also a “military compound” with sniper nests and ammunition storage.
Separately, several members of the Kennedy family filed a lawsuit to block the project on the grounds that it would overshadow the graves of their loved ones and block the view of the eternal flame at President Kennedy’s grave.
In a statement, attorneys for the descendants of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and Senator Ted Kennedy argued that “the proposed gigantic arch constitutes an unlawful interference with Arlington National Cemetery and the heroes commemorated there, including at the graves and memorials of the Kennedy brothers and Ethel Kennedy.”
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