It was at least partly the hat that got to Rep. Eugene Vindman.
He was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on March 7, for the dignified transfer of the first troops killed in the U.S.-Israel military action against Iran. Vindman, whose 7th District includes the Fredericksburg area, was there because of the death of a constituent from Spotsylvania County.
Vindman was near Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and others, including President Donald Trump, who was about an arm’s length away, he recalled.
“Really all the architects of this conflict were literally standing right in front of me,” the lawmaker told the Free Press after an event in Spotsylvania Courthouse on Tuesday.
Trump’s appearance in particular stuck with Vindman. The commander-in-chief was wearing a white baseball cap with “USA” in gold letters.
“And I’m standing there,” the congressman said, “staring at the back of his head with that silly hat at a solemn event. I just … you know, completely not dignified.”
The scene seemed to encapsulate the criticism that Vindman and the other members of the Fredericksburg area’s congressional delegation have voiced in the past week.
In a short speech in Spotsylvania, Vindman noted the passing of Army Chief Warrant Officer Three Robert M. Marzan, a 54-year-old husband and father living in the county.
Marzan was killed in action in Kuwait supporting Operation Epic Fury, and Vindman, who was in Spotsylvania to celebrate the awarding of unrelated federal grants, called the soldier’s death a “terrible tragedy for Spotsylvania, for the 7th Congressional District and for the entire country.”
After the speech, he said the Trump administration has no plan for the Iran assault, and that the price tag of the operation is millions of dollars per day.
“American blood and treasure being sacrificed for — God knows what,” Vindman said. “That’s what I have trouble with.”
He also pointed out that the Fredericksburg region, with thousands of veterans and military members, really feels it when the armed forces are carrying out a prominent enterprise.
“This is an area that is heavily impacted by conflicts like this,” he said.
Vindman recently voted for a war-powers resolution on Iran that would have removed U.S. troops from the country because Congress didn’t authorize the hostilities.
While that measure failed, Vindman said some of his colleagues who voted against the resolution also had qualms but wanted to give Trump more time on the operation.
So Vindman said he suspects there’ll be another vote after the nation gets a better sense of what the president is trying to accomplish in the Middle East.
“Nobody really knows,” he said. “Nobody knows. Markets don’t know. Our allies don’t know.”
Trump is likely to ask Congress for more funding to support the Iran conflict, too, Vindman said.
In Washington
Virginia’s U.S. senators and Vindman’s Democratic Party mates, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, also had harsh words for the Trump administration.
Kaine spoke Thursday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, urging an end to what he sees as an illegal, unnecessary war with Iran. As he has done regarding other military actions, the senator and some of his colleagues have filed war powers resolutions against the conflict.
“America has been at war with Iran for 12 days,” Kaine said at the hearing. “The costs to our troops, to everyday Americans and to innocent Iranian civilians — even schoolchildren — are dramatic. The war is deeply unpopular.”
The senator said Trump has escalated use of the military to carry out hostilities all over the world without Congressional approval.
“We’re at war because of the unilateral actions of one man who has grown very confident that Congress will not challenge his kingly behavior,” Kaine said.
In a Zoom call with reporters Thursday, Warner said he was very concerned about where the Iran conflict is headed “since the president never came to the American people and said here was his goal.”
One goal Trump has spoken about is regime change, he said.
But the former “supreme leader” of Iran is simply being replaced by his son, who probably won’t cooperate with the U.S., Warner said.
“So you have an even harder-core member of the regime and so far appears not much weakness in that leadership in terms of people turning away,” he said. “So no notion of imminent regime change.”
Warner’s other question: How long will the war last? There’s no answer on that, he said.
“And if the president declares, well, we’re victorious tomorrow and pulls out, that doesn’t get rid of Iran’s capability to continue to hit us,” Warner said. “And we still continue to hear that Israel would keep going in the conflict, which again would put us potentially in conflict with our strongest ally and still leave American facilities vulnerable.”
