When J.D. Vance talks about America’s wars, he does so with the gravity of someone who has lived through one. Long before becoming a U.S. senator and then the Republican nominee for vice president, Vance was a young Marine deployed to Iraq in the mid-2000s. His time there, though not marked by firefights or battlefield heroics, became a defining chapter in his life. It shaped his political worldview, fostered lifelong friendships, and left him deeply skeptical of the foreign policy establishment that sent thousands of Americans to a conflict he now calls a mistake.
Enlistment and the Call to Service
Vance joined the Marine Corps in 2003, fresh out of high school in Middletown, Ohio. Like many of his peers, he was searching for direction. The war in Iraq had just begun, and patriotism surged across the nation. For a young man raised in a working-class community, the Marines offered both stability and purpose.
He trained as a combat correspondent—a military journalist tasked with reporting from within the ranks, documenting missions, and telling the stories of fellow Marines. Unlike infantrymen, combat correspondents were not expected to lead charges into enemy strongholds, but their role still carried risks. They traveled with units, often into volatile regions, and were exposed to the same dangers of mortars, rockets, and roadside bombs.
Deployment to Iraq
In 2005, Vance was deployed to Al Asad Air Base in Anbar Province, one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq at the time. For six months, he worked alongside Marines who flew missions, guarded convoys, and patrolled insurgent strongholds.
While much of his work involved writing and photography, he occasionally accompanied combat units “outside the wire.” On these missions he carried both an M16 rifle and a 9mm pistol—standard issue for Marines operating in unsecured areas. Yet by his own admission, he was fortunate: “I never saw a firefight myself,” he has said. “I was lucky to escape any real fighting.”
Still, his base was regularly shelled by mortar and rocket fire. At night, he and his fellow Marines sometimes huddled in bunkers, uncertain whether they would make it through the bombardments unscathed.
The Bonds of War
It was in Iraq that Vance forged one of the most important friendships of his life—with Cullen Tiernan, another Marine combat correspondent. Tiernan later recalled how they shared the daily stresses of deployment, sometimes joking about their unusual job of covering Marines rather than directly fighting alongside them.
Despite their differing paths after the war—Vance entering conservative politics and Tiernan becoming a union organizer with left-leaning views—the two remained close. Their bond was cemented not by ideology but by the shared experience of danger, isolation, and survival in a war zone.
Disillusionment and Political Awakening
Vance left Iraq not with medals or tales of battlefield exploits, but with questions. The young Marine who had enlisted believing in America’s mission abroad returned home a skeptic.
“I went over there believing in the project,” Vance told reporters years later. “I came home asking whether any of it made sense.”
His skepticism deepened as the years passed and the toll of the war grew clearer: nearly 4,500 Americans killed, tens of thousands wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, and trillions of dollars spent. The promises of quick victory and democratic transformation in the Middle East had crumbled into insurgency, sectarian violence, and chaos.
In hindsight, Vance has described his support for the Iraq War as one of his greatest mistakes. He has criticized the “foreign policy elites” who, in his view, misled the nation into a conflict without clear purpose or achievable goals.
A Veteran in Politics
Vance’s service has since become central to his political identity. As the first Marine veteran on a major-party national ticket since John McCain, he embodies a generation of post-9/11 veterans who grappled with the costs of America’s longest wars.
On the campaign trail, he often contrasts his experiences with those of Washington insiders. He argues for a restrained foreign policy—one that prioritizes narrow, decisive missions over the kind of open-ended interventions that defined Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Our military should be used decisively, not endlessly,” Vance has said, echoing a philosophy shaped by the frustrations of his deployment.
Memory, Service, and Legacy
Some of Vance’s critics have accused him of overstating his combat role, pointing out that as a correspondent he was not directly involved in fighting. But many of his fellow Marines, including Tiernan, have defended him. They stress that while Vance may not have exchanged fire with insurgents, he lived through the same dangers as those around him. “We were shelled, rocketed, mortared,” Tiernan said. “That’s not nothing.”
The larger truth is that Vance’s service was not about battlefield glory but about witnessing the costs of war firsthand—and carrying those lessons into civilian life.
From Iraq to the White House
J.D. Vance’s Iraq tour was a relatively short chapter in a much longer story, but its impact has been enduring. It taught him skepticism toward foreign wars, gave him friendships that have lasted decades, and provided a grounding experience that continues to shape his politics.
As he stands on the national stage today, seeking the vice presidency, his time as a Marine combat correspondent in Iraq remains a central part of his narrative. It is both a badge of service and a reminder of the mistakes of the past—mistakes he insists America must not repeat.
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