In the late 1980s, Lorn Fant, 65, of Reno, was a sailor serving aboard the USS Callaghan in the Gulf of Oman as the war between Iran and Iraq was in progress.
“I remember seeing oil tankers burning,” said Fant, who was interviewed March 28 while marching in the “No Kings” protest in downtown Reno. “We would identify the ships that were coming and going in the strait.”
The Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz are back in the news today as Israeli and American forces are bombing Iran, and thousands of U.S. Marines and paratroopers are arriving in the Middle East as a prelude to a possible ground war. That’s why Fant decided to spend a Saturday morning marching in the protest.
“The Iran war is a complete blunder, a huge mistake,” he said. “We are in a worse position now than we were when the war started. I think Trump will surrender and just back out.”
The war is one of the administration’s diversions to draw attention away from the Epstein files, Fant said.
“The one big irony is that releasing the Epstein files was a big demand of the Republicans who kept saying that they needed to be released. Now it turns out they’re in them,” he said.
Fant was among many military veterans—who served from the Vietnam era to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—who marched in the Reno “No Kings” event. Some carried signs condemning the Iran war and other policies of the Trump administration. Many carried U.S. flags.
“We’re trying to do our best to reclaim the flag,” said Farrell Vaughn, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division in the 1980s and is on the leadership team for Indivisible Northern Nevada, which organizes the “No Kings” protests. “Very conservative Republicans claim to be patriotic, but we believe we’re the ones who are being patriotic with our protests, so we’ll get our flags out as much as possible,” he said.
Vaughn said veterans have a better understanding of the consequences of war, particularly the price paid by soldiers on the ground.
“I’m a little bit worried about those guys and women being over there right now,” he said. “I’m afraid they’re going to be misused outside of their objectives.”
Vaughn noted that, like many Marines, the 82nd is a rapid-deployment force whose mission is often to seize and hold targets such as airports or shipping centers like Iran’s Kharg Island, an oil export facility. Once deployed on the ground, he said, the forces would be at the mercy of an unclear mission and become an easy target for Iranian drones and missiles.
Vaughn said he recently went skiing with four other veterans, and all were worried about an endless war in the Middle East.
“I know Trump keeps saying we’re not getting into another quagmire, and I think he’s leading us right into one,” he said. “They’re really concerned. They think (Secretary of Defense) Pete Hegseth is a complete idiot and that Trump is a complete idiot. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Once on the ground, he said, our troops “would all of a sudden be sitting ducks, just targets for drones, missiles and artillery.”
Larry Brown of Sparks, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran who marched in the protest, agreed that the Trump administration can’t be trusted.
“The Iran regime is evil, but it should be a world effort to fix things,” he said. “Trump went in with no plan, no information. It’s frustrating. I’m not saying a war shouldn’t have happened, but we went about it all wrong. If we can win the midterms, maybe there will be some justice.”
George Lindesmith of Reno was in the Army in 1968, serving in the Central Highlands of Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division. He said he has no respect for a commander in chief who unilaterally took the nation to war when he knows nothing about the reality of battle.
“Remember what Trump was doing in Vietnam?” he asked. “Trump was running away. He ran from the war five times (through draft deferments). What he is doing is committing war crimes now. Trump and Hegseth should be imprisoned for what they did to Venezuela, attacking the boats and killing the survivors. Now we’re in Iran, and it looks like Cuba is next.
“There’s no way to take over the Strait of Hormuz without using ground troops. I’m a believer in country over party every time, and that’s what the people in Congress should be doing.”
Veterans interviewed at the march said they are against the administration and the war, but not the troops whose duty is to fight in the conflict. During the Vietnam War, veterans who protested were often criticized for undermining the U.S. troops who were fighting.
“I think that kind of that criticism still exists, and some vets and soldiers would say you can’t protest the war; you need to follow the leadership,” Vaughn said. “But I think that maybe this situation is slightly different. … With Vietnam, we were close to that post-World War II John Wayne patriotism: Just go out and, you know, kill all the bad guys, and nothing else will happen. The attitude was ‘might makes right, and there will be no blowback.’”
Americans, including veterans, have learned a lot in the half-century since Vietnam, he said.
“Trump is using the U.S. military to prop up all of his oil industry friends,” Vaughn said. “I think getting involved in a ground war in Iran is a huge mistake. … I think it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Indivisible Northern Nevada’s next Tyranny Tuesday, at noon, Tuesday, March 31 at the Federal Building, is focused on “No War in Iran.” The group will be protesting and collecting signatures for petitions to deliver to Nevada’s U.S. senators.