By admin 
The Iran war has now seen the first US troop deaths since March, with the announcements that three service members have died in recent days.
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And with their deaths came a reminder that President Donald Trump, who’s set to attend another dignified transfer on Wednesday, really struggles to speak empathetically about this issue.
Indeed, the last few days have reinforced that Trump seems preoccupied with inserting the troops’ deaths into a political calculation as his unpopular war nears its fifth month.
It’s happened repeatedly since the start of the war, but his most recent comments to the media over the weekend drove it home.
Speaking to NewsNation, Trump offered something amounting to the kinds of comments expected from a president. He called the deaths “a very sad thing” while adding that they were “in service to our country.” He then repeated his goal that “we’re never allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
But when speaking to the New York Post, he veered off course.
After calling the deaths “a shame,” he went on. “They did it because they don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said of the troops. “… And it just shows you how bad (the Iranians) are.”
While the president restated his goal for the war in the former interview, he seemed to suggest that the slain troops actually endorsed his war in the latter interview. He has not offered evidence of this. Troops are supposed to fight even if they don’t believe in the cause.
And Trump and his administration have previously stepped into some dicey territory on this subject.
After a dignified transfer of service members in mid-March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “family after family” at Dover Air Base in Delaware had urged him to press forward and win the war.
“They said finish this. Honor their sacrifice. Do not waver. Do not stop until the job is done,” Hegseth claimed.
But the comments of at least one father of a dead soldier called that into question. Charles Simmons, the father of 28-year-old Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, told NBC News “that was not something we talked about.”
While Simmons had some kind words for Trump and Hegseth — and made clear he didn’t speak for other families — he said he had not urged them to keep fighting the war.
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“No, I didn’t say anything along those lines,” he said.
Despite Simmons’ comments, Trump went on to make much the same claim as Hegseth during an April 1 primetime address from the Oval Office. Trump said that “every single one of the people, their loved ones, said, ‘Please, sir, please, finish the job.’ Every one of them.”
And Trump’s conduct surrounding these dignified transfers has also raised plenty of eyebrows.
At the one earlier in March, he wore a baseball cap that is for sale on his business’ website. And just days later, his political action committee used a photo of that dignified transfer in a fundraising email. It featured Trump saluting with a flag-draped transfer case, which holds the remains of a soldier, in the foreground.
And going back to the earliest deaths in the Iran war, Trump and Hegseth also turned heads with their comments about them:
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After the first ones, Trump said, “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”
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Then in a video the same day, he spoke in ways that his critics cast as callous. “And sadly, there will likely be more (deaths) before it ends,” Trump said, before seeming to ad-lib: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”
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Hegseth criticized the media for covering the deaths too much, accusing the press at a Pentagon briefing of trying to harm Trump politically by making the deaths front-page news. (Shortly after those comments, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine at the same briefing memorialized the troops extensively.)
The uniting characteristic of all of these responses is politics.
In the moments after these deaths, Trump and Hegseth seem to sense the possibility that they could be used against the war effort and Trump personally, and sought to immediately try to head that off.
And later, they both seemed to try to flip the deaths to their advantage in using the supposed support of the fallen and/or their families to make the case for the war.
(CNN also reported Monday that the administration has been slow to disclose injuries to troops, which the administration says is because of security needs.)
After the NBC report about the father whose account differed from Hegseth’s, a Pentagon spokesman claimed “the details of each individual conversation remain private.”
But it was the Trump administration that decided to talk about the supposed general tenor of those conversation — in a pretty shocking way. Now Trump is doing something similar by claiming the troops most recently killed “don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
And everything that’s happened in these episodes makes very clear why: Because when troops die, Trump can’t help but think about it in terms of raw politics.
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