I graduated from West Point and was commissioned into the US Army in the summer of 2003 — just thirty days after President George W. Bush flew onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln dragging a banner with the now infamous words “Mission Accomplished.” Just six months later I deployed to Iraq, the mission very much not “accomplished” and the mission still unclear. Fourteen months after Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, I lost my first friend, a Virginian, in Iraq. The proximate cause of his death was sniper and rocket propelled grenade fire. But I knew the real cause: the cowardice of politicians who had been too afraid of being called “weak on terror” in the 2002 elections to stop an unjustified war of choice in Iraq.
Four years after he sought to violently overturn the results of the 2020 election, we have watched President Donald Trump deploy our military to occupy Democratic-run cities and states. We have seen him launch attacks globally without regard to our laws and the norms that have governed the United States since the Civil War — and often in contravention of America’s global interests. This weekend he declared that he and his cabinet officers are “running” Venezuela after beginning a war framed brazenly as a takeover of Venezuelan oil — secured with the blood of American women and men if necessary.
Twenty-three years after George Bush’s failed Middle East incursion, Trump and his lackeys are repeating the same failed playbook. While the President’s failure to seek Congressional approval is a grim reminder of his disregard for our Constitution, it pales in comparison to the strategic lunacy of overthrowing a South American government — even a terrible one — and declaring that the United States President and his Cabinet are now in charge of Venezuela.
It is mad to declare to the American people and the world that from Cuba to Columbia to Iran we will use our military to enact regime change, not only because of our disagreements with other governments or support for human rights but to gain access to their resources. It not only signals that Russia’s efforts to seize resources in Ukraine are justified but also that China would be in its rights to seize Taiwan. And, as the President himself made clear in a Saturday press conference, he sees the act as a continuation of his policy, stopped temporarily by the Supreme Court, to deploy American soldiers against the American people.
Our Commonwealth need not be complicit in this insanity. That is why several of my colleagues and I in the Virginia General Assembly are introducing the National Guard Integrity and Democracy Protection Act. No longer can we assume that the President of the United States or his Cabinet will adhere to the norms that govern the use of military force in our constitutional democracy. No longer can we act as though those in Congress will have the courage to act to stop the futile spilling of American blood. No longer can we assume that members of the Virginia National Guard will be deployed legally and their lives surrendered only in defense of our Constitution and country — or that they won’t be used against the American people.
Our bill is simple: it demands a review of all efforts to federalize Virginia troops to understand the circumstances, scope, duration, legal authority and goals for their deployment. It also demands transparency into how that deployment is being funded. It prevents the use of state resources to support an illegal deployment of the Virginia National Guard in the Commonwealth, in other states, or abroad. It requires the Virginia Attorney General to intervene to stop illegal deployments.
As a seventeen-year-old new cadet swearing an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, I believed that the politicians who had sworn that same oath would protect our democracy and the troops that served it. Too often they have not. I am proud to serve in a General Assembly that now has the chance to honor that oath, and I’m devastated at the disregard for American interests globally and the rule of law at home that have made such an Act necessary.
Dan Helmer of Fairfax County represents the 10th District in the Virginia House of Delegates. He is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.