In Clarksville and neighboring Oak Grove, Kentucky, the war in Iran arrived into daily life at Fort Campbell—one of the biggest American Army bases, straddling the Tennessee-Kentucky line—with residents measuring their reaction against the toll of earlier Middle East conflicts. The base is home to the 101st Airborne Division, known as “the Screaming Eagles,” a unit that has sent tens of thousands of troops on deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since after Sept. 11, 2001. In the surrounding towns, war memorials and military support services sit alongside the retail and routines that cater to soldiers and their families.
Juan Munoz, who said he is an Army veteran and now works as a career counselor in Clarksville for people leaving the military, described local families as divided between support and worry. He said families in the area have “mixed emotions” about the new war, with “many younger soldiers” excited to deploy while spouses, parents and siblings worry about their safety. Munoz said concern for a loved one does not erase support for the Iran attack, adding, “At the end of the day, they’re going to support their service member.” He also said he views the war as a “great move” because he believes Iran is equipping “our enemies” and putting U.S. troops and allies in the region at risk.
Munoz’s view was echoed in the way others framed the question as one of preparation and trust rather than uncertainty alone. Edward Bauman, a veteran who said he spent 23 years in the Army and deployed to Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, said he bases his support for the war on what he described as his trust in President Donald Trump. Bauman told a reporter outside an Oak Grove box store that his “takeaway is there had to have been some reason for him to bomb them,” adding, “I don’t think he would have just went out of his way to just, ‘I’m going to bomb these people’.” He said he does not believe Trump is taking the U.S. into another prolonged conflict in the Middle East, and he argued, “It’s not going to be another Afghanistan. It’s not going to be another Iraq. We’re not going to go in and try to occupy them.”
Bauman’s framing came as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Monday that the conflict “is not endless,” even as he warned more American casualties are likely in the weeks ahead. For residents near the base, that combination—an insistence on limits paired with an expectation of new losses—appeared to sharpen the immediate focus on what families will face next. The area’s day-to-day military identity, from Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts to the role of Fort Campbell-affiliated students at Austin Peay State University, has made deployments and readiness part of local life, but those community routines do not make the uncertainty easy.
Shannon Razsadin, CEO of the Virginia-based nonprofit Military Family Advisory Network, said she sees anxiety tied to what she described as unknowns. She said there is “a good amount of stress and anxiety from the community just around the unknowns right now,” even while emphasizing pride in military service. Razsadin said, “They’re incredibly proud. Military families are proud of their service. And our military, our service members are prepared, and they are ready.”
Susan Lynn, a state representative in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) southeast of Fort Campbell, said she carries both concern and support through her family’s own experience. In 2020, Lynn said she posted on Facebook thanking Trump for not sending her son—who is enlisted in the Air Force—“into another war.” On Saturday, she said she posted that her son has been deployed and asked for prayers. In a phone interview Monday, Lynn described her son as “extremely patriotic” and said she plans to “trust” a decision she said came from her commander in chief, telling that in her view it “is something we should do.”
At the same time, not all residents around Fort Campbell framed the Iran attack as necessary. Chris McFarland, a veteran who said he served out of Fort Campbell and deployed to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, described making his opposition visible since learning about the strike. He said he had a sign made declaring “No more wars” and has been holding it on a major thoroughfare in Clarksville each day.
McFarland, who leads the nonprofit Veterans for All, said drivers have sometimes expressed hostility to him during his protest but that others have stopped to talk and ask for information. He said many people are “in shock, confused, concerned,” and he also said his personal opposition is blunt. “It is 100% unnecessary. It is unconstitutional. Literally, our own Congress didn’t even approve of this,” McFarland said, adding that he believes the strike happened without acknowledgement “at 3:00 in the morning” to “murder people over in Iran.” For combat veterans like himself, he said the prospect of another war brings back bad memories, telling that it “just puts us right back in, right back at ground zero.”