美国建国250周年之际，费城气温高到足以让运动鞋的橡胶变形，迈克尔·麦克弗森走上了街头。由于极端高温，该市取消了官方游行。但62岁的海湾战争老兵麦克弗森并未因此退缩。他从西雅图横跨全国，与500多名 fellow 退伍军人、现役军人和军人家庭一起游行。他们聚集在独立厅附近——美国的诞生地——但他们并非来纪念一个不受矛盾影响的神话国度。相反，抗议者走上街头，展开了一条横幅，上面写着。
On the 250th anniversary of the United States, as temperatures in Philadelphia climbed high enough to warp sneaker rubber, Michael McPhearson marched. The city had canceled its official parade due to extreme heat. But McPhearson, a 62-year-old Gulf War veteran, was undeterred. He had traveled across the country from Seattle to march alongside more than 500 of his fellow veterans, active-duty service members, and military families. They gathered near Independence Hall—America’s birthplace—but they didn’t come to commemorate a mythic nation untouched by contradiction. Instead, protesters stepped into the streets and unfurled a banner that read .
据组织者称，这场7月4日的游行是自越南战争以来规模最大的退伍军人反战抗议。随着唐纳德·特朗普总统对伊朗的战争拖入第九个月，退伍军人的抵抗运动只会不断壮大。从海湾战争军官和9·11事件后的海军陆战队员，到越战时期的老兵和现役军人，许多曾将服兵役视为最高形式爱国主义的美国人正得出同样的结论：他们对这个国家的责任可能不再是去战斗，而是去拒绝。
The Fourth of July march was the largest anti-war veterans protest since the Vietnam War, according to organizers. And as President Donald Trump’s war with Iran drags into its ninth month, the veterans’ resistance movement is only growing. From Gulf War officers and post-9/11 Marines to Vietnam-era elders and active-duty troops, many Americans who once saw military service as the highest form of patriotism are arriving at the same conclusion: Their duty to this country may no longer be to fight, but to refuse.
当特朗普部署国民警卫队进入洛杉矶支持移民和海关执法局（ICE）时，退伍军人热线接到的“电话量大幅激增”。
The vets’ hotline saw “a huge bump in calls” when Trump deployed the National Guard into Los Angeles to support ICE.
自2025年2月以来，麦克弗森一直领导着“退伍军人和平组织”（Veterans For Peace），这是一家总部位于圣路易斯的非营利组织，致力于揭露战争的真正起因和代价。自1985年成立以来，VFP已发展成为一个由退伍军人和盟友组成的全球网络，拥有140多个分会。
Since February 2025, McPhearson has been at the helm of Veterans For Peace, a St. Louis-based nonprofit focused on exposing the true causes and costs of war. Since its founding in 1985, VFP has grown into a global network of veterans and allies with more than 140 chapters.
但特朗普的第二个任期成了一个转折点：据麦克弗森说，自总统于2025年初重新执政以来，VFP的3500名活跃成员中约有1000人加入。麦克弗森说，越来越多的退伍军人现在认为美国已陷入对战争的世代成瘾，并认定“我们不能再回到过去的样子”。这股反思浪潮也波及现役军人。在北卡罗来纳州费耶特维尔的和平组织“贵格会之家”，莱诺尔·亚格尔25年来一直通过“军人权利热线”为军人提供咨询。
But Trump’s second term has been a turning point: According to McPhearson, roughly 1,000 of VFP’s 3,500 active members have joined since the president returned to office in early 2025. More and more veterans now see the US as locked into a generational addiction to war, McPhearson says, and are deciding that “we can’t go back to the way it was.”The reckoning is reaching active-duty troops, too. At Quaker House—a peace organization in Fayetteville, North Carolina—Lenore Yarger has counseled service members with the GI Rights Hotline for 25 years.
亚格尔说，去年6月特朗普宣布派遣国民警卫队进入洛杉矶支持移民和海关执法局的行动时，热线接到的“电话量大幅激增”。
Yarger says the hotline saw “a huge bump in calls” last June, when Trump announced he was sending National Guard troops into Los Angeles to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
随后是特朗普对委内瑞拉船只的打击，这在军人中引发了恐惧，担心自己被命令犯下战争罪行。来电者开始询问这些命令是否合法，以及如果服从命令是否会被追究责任。
Then came Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan boats, which sparked fears among service members that they were being ordered to commit war crimes. Callers began asking whether the orders were legal, and if they’d be held accountable for following them.
但据亚格尔统计，她今年春天目睹的情况是热线历史上电话量最高的一次。在特朗普首次打击伊朗之后的几个月里，来电数量增加了一倍多。
But what Yarger witnessed this past spring represents, by her accounting, the highest call volume in the hotline’s history. In the months directly following Trump’s first strikes on Iran, calls more than doubled.
一些来电者是现役军人，他们曾随“史诗之怒行动”部署——这是美国与以色列于2月28日开始的联合军事行动的代号——但现在想申请依良心拒服兵役者身份。他们说，部署期间的经历改变了他们对战争的信念。
Some callers were active-duty service members who’d deployed with Operation Epic Fury—the codename for America’s joint military operations with Israel that began on February 28—but now wanted to file for conscientious objector status. They said what they experienced during their deployment changed their beliefs about war.
亚格尔说：“我们无法向他们保证，如果他们服从军事命令，就不会被指控做了违法的事，我们也无法向他们保证，如果他们拒绝，就不会受到惩罚。现在当兵真的很难。”特朗普对伊朗的战争极不受欢迎；选民在11月3日明确表达了这一点，他们大批出动，在投票箱前否决了共和党候选人。截至10月下旬，这场战争已耗资约470亿美元，美国和以色列的袭击已在伊朗造成3500多人死亡，其中许多是平民。五角大楼目前统计有21名美国军人阵亡、865人受伤，这些数字已多次上调，且没有公开宣布。
“We can’t promise them that they won’t be accused of doing something illegal” if they follow military orders, Yarger says, “and we also can’t promise them that they won’t be punished if they refuse. It’s a really hard time to be in the military right now.”Trump’s war with Iran is deeply unpopular; voters made that clear on November 3, when they turned out in droves to reject Republican candidates at the ballot box. As of late October, the war has cost an estimated $47 billion, and US and Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Iran, many of them civilians. The Pentagon now counts 21 American service members killed and 865 wounded, numbers it has revised upward repeatedly, with no public announcement.
在此背景下，麦克弗森走了一个又一个城市，试图让他所称特朗普政府竭力不去看见的东西变得可见：那些承受美国炸弹的人。
Against this backdrop, McPhearson has traveled to city after city trying to make visible what he argues the Trump administration is working hard not to see: the people on the receiving end of American bombs.
自特朗普重返白宫以来，麦克弗森的工作已两次让他戴上手铐。去年6月，在特朗普军事生日阅兵前夕，麦克弗森与约60名退伍军人和军人家属一起在国会大厦台阶上静坐，要求政府将国民警卫队撤出美国街头。
Twice since Trump’s return to office, McPhearson’s work has landed him in handcuffs. Last June, on the eve of Trump’s military birthday parade, McPhearson joined roughly 60 veterans and military family members in a sit-in on the Capitol steps, demanding that the administration pull the National Guard off American streets.
今年4月，他是150多名退伍军人和军人家属中的一员，他们挤满了一座国会大楼的圆形大厅，要求结束伊朗战争。越战老兵与曾在伊拉克和阿富汗服役的人并肩而立，为阵亡的美国士兵折叠国旗，并为被美国和以色列空袭击杀的伊朗人手持红色郁金香。国会警察当天逮捕了66人。
This past April, he was one of more than 150 veterans and military family members who filled the rotunda of a congressional building to demand an end to the Iran War. Vietnam veterans stood alongside those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, folding a flag for fallen American soldiers and holding red tulips for the Iranians killed by US and Israeli strikes. Capitol Police arrested 66 people that day.
麦克弗森在费耶特维尔长大，紧邻布拉格堡军事基地。他的祖父、继父和几位叔叔都曾在海外服役。麦克弗森告诉我，在一个军人城镇里，参军是少数几条通往好生活的可靠道路之一，所以他17岁就加入了陆军预备役。后来他在大学加入了预备役军官训练团（ROTC），第一次海湾战争期间成为第24步兵师的一名野战炮兵军官。1992年，他以上尉军衔退出现役。
McPhearson grew up in Fayetteville, next to the Fort Bragg military base. His grandfather, stepfather, and several uncles all served overseas. In a military town, McPhearson told me, the Army was one of the few reliable paths to a good living, so he joined the Army Reserve at 17. He went on to join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in college, then became a field artillery officer in the 24th Infantry Division during the first Gulf War. He left active duty as a captain in 1992.
“你不会希望在第一次收到非法命令时才去思考它。”麦克弗森的军旅生涯结束12年后，他自己的儿子也入伍并被派往伊拉克。那几个月是“他一生中最糟糕的时期之一”。他们一家四代人上了战场。
“You don’t want to be thinking about illegal orders for the very first time when you receive them.”Twelve years after McPhearson’s military service ended, his own son enlisted and deployed to Iraq. Those months were “some of the worst times in [his] life.”Across four generations, his family had gone to war.
但麦克弗森说，推动当今退伍军人抵抗运动的，并不只是无休止战争的累积。而是为暴力辩护所付出的努力少得可怜，甚至连入侵伊拉克之前那种捏造的理由都没有。
But it isn’t simply the accumulation of forever wars that’s driving today’s veterans’ resistance movement, McPhearson says. It is how little effort has been made to justify the violence, without even the manufactured case that preceded the invasion of Iraq.
“我们说的是美国[在中东]持续处于战争状态36年，”麦克弗森说，“我们一直在杀人。”麦克弗森的疲惫似乎在选民中引起了广泛共鸣：选举之夜，退役陆军少校、民主党人理查德·奥赫达翻转了北卡罗来纳州第9国会选区的众议院席位，该选区包括布拉格堡和费耶特维尔的大部分地区。奥赫达多次抨击伊朗战争，并称国防部长皮特·赫格塞思是“一名战争罪犯，应该被弹劾”。他是自1963年以来第一位赢得该选区的民主党人。
“We’re talking about 36 years of the U.S. being constantly at war [in the Middle East],” McPhearson says. “We’re constantly killing people.”McPhearson’s fatigue appears to be widely felt among voters: On election night, Democrat Richard Ojeda, a retired Army major, flipped a House seat in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, which includes Fort Bragg and most of Fayetteville. Ojeda has repeatedly slammed the Iran War and called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “a war criminal [who] deserves to be impeached.”He is the first Democrat to win the district since 1963.
“我身上纹着我在战争中失去的13个兄弟的名字，”奥赫达8月在X上发帖写道，“我完全清楚，当上面的人搞砸时，付出代价的究竟是谁。”在贵格会之家，自伊朗战争爆发以来，来电速度只是略有放缓。从3月起，美军权利热线平均每月接到约320通电话，高于此前约150通的月均水平。
“I carry the names of 13 brothers I lost in war tattooed on my body,” Ojeda posted on X in August“I know exactly who pays the price when the people at the top screw up.”At Quaker House, the pace of calls has eased only slightly since the start of the Iran War. From March on, the GI Rights Hotline has averaged about 320 calls a month, up from an average of about 150.
亚格尔说，热线不会告诉来电者该怎么做，因为“那是军方（做的事）”。咨询员会列出各种选项：退役、延期、豁免。对于那些反对这场战争但并不反对所有战争的人来说，这些选项很有限，因为依良心拒服兵役者身份要求反对任何形式的战争。但许多来电者开始研究美国历次战争的历史，回来时已经改变。
The hotline doesn’t tell callers what to do, because “that’s what the military [does],” Yarger says. Instead, counselors lay out options: discharges, delays, exemptions. For those who object to this war but not all war, those options are narrow, since conscientious objector status requires opposition to war in any form. But many callers begin researching the history of American wars and come back changed.
亚格尔交谈过的大多数人“不怕死，但怕杀人”。最重要的是，她努力告诉人们，他们并没有疯。她说，军方“会让你觉得，如果你质疑自己被要求做的事，你就是坏人、软弱或懦弱。我们只是努力让他们确信，事实并非如此。”
Most of the people Yarger talks to are “not afraid of dying, but afraid of killing.”Above all, she tries to tell people they aren’t crazy. The military, she says, “can make you feel like you’re bad and weak or cowardly if you question what you’re being asked to do. We try to just reinforce that that isn’t the case.”
马特·霍华德是伊拉克战争老兵，曾担任海军陆战队直升机机械师，他采取了更直接的方式。他担任“转向：老兵反战”组织的临时组织主任。该组织由9·11事件后的服役人员和老兵组成，致力于终止“永久战争的外交政策，以及在全国各地社区使用军事武器、战术和价值观”。去年9月，“转向”与“无战可赢”和“负责任领导老兵”组织共同发起了一场广告牌宣传活动，告诉国民警卫队成员和现役军人，拒绝非法命令并非激进立场——在他们看来，这是一种义务。
Matt Howard, an Iraq War veteran and former Marine Corps helicopter mechanic, has taken a more direct approach. He serves as the interim organizing director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, a network of post-9/11 service members and veterans organizing to end “a foreign policy of permanent war and the use of military weapons, tactics, and values in communities across the country.”Last September, along with Win Without War and Veterans For Responsible Leadership, About Face launched a billboard campaign telling National Guard members and active-duty service members that refusing unlawful orders is not a radical position—it is, in their view, an obligation.
广告牌最先在华盛顿特区竖起，随后出现在芝加哥、孟菲斯，以及布拉格堡和海军陆战队勒琼营基地外。
The billboards went up first in Washington, DC, then in Chicago, Memphis, and outside Fort Bragg and Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.
费耶特维尔的一块广告牌上写着：“你去空降部队只是为了给移民和海关执法局当保安吗？”其他广告牌则提出了这场宣传活动的核心问题——“这就是你当初报名参军的目的吗？”——并引导军人寻求法律援助。
“Did you go to Airborne just to pull security for ICE?” asks one billboard in Fayetteville. Others pose the question at the heart of the campaign—”Is this what you signed up for?”—and point troops toward legal help.
此后，“退伍军人和平”组织各分会从圣迭戈到图森也竖起了自己的广告牌，告诉现役军人和国民警卫队成员：“你有责任拒绝非法命令。”霍华德说：“你不会希望在收到命令的那一刻，才第一次去思考它是否非法。”“转向组织”希望鼓励军人提前为那一刻做好准备。
Veterans For Peace chapters have since put up their own billboards from San Diego to Tucson, telling active duty and National Guard members: “You have a duty to refuse illegal orders.”“You don’t want to be thinking about illegal orders for the very first time when you receive them,” Howard says. About Face wants to encourage service members to plan ahead for that moment.
霍华德清醒地认识到，当下与以往退伍军人异见时刻的不同之处。他指出，伊拉克战争催生了一场反战运动，但那场运动在很大程度上只是对一届政府、一个灾难性决定作出的被动反应。
Howard is clear-eyed about what distinguishes today from previous moments of veteran dissent. The Iraq War produced an anti-war movement, he notes, but one that was largely reactive to a single administration, a single catastrophic decision.
但广告牌宣传活动、国会大厦静坐以及游行，并不是那些指望问题会随着下一届总统选举、甚至一个由民主党控制的国会而自行解决的人所采取的行动。现在发生的事，在结构上更为深层，也更难以遏制。
But the billboard campaign, the Capitol sit-ins, and the marches are not the actions of people who expect the problem to resolve itself with the next presidential election, or even a blue Congress. What is happening now is something more structural and difficult to contain.
霍华德说：“这正是一个非常鲜明的时刻，特朗普政权在追逐赤裸裸的权力时已撕下伪装，而这种追逐既表现在他们在海外的军事侵略上，也表现在国内。”
“This is a very much a moment where the Trump regime is mask off in their pursuit of raw power,” Howard says, “and the way that’s showing up is in their military aggression overseas, but also here at home.”