I served with my dog Dasty in Afghanistan. Dogs are man’s best friend on the battlefield
America is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year, a milestone made possible by the service members who have answered the call of duty since 1776. But the story of our country — and how we got here — is incomplete without including the contributions of the four-legged heroes who have served alongside our brave men and women in uniform.
These dogs deserve an extra treat and belly rub this Canine Veterans Day (March 13) — especially my Dutch Shepherd, Dasty.
Courageous canines have fought alongside U.S. troops since the Revolutionary War, helping guard munitions stockpiles and serve as battlefield messengers. Fast-forward more than 150 years, and the K-9 Corps was officially formed during World War II, with roughly 1,600 working dogs now serving in our armed forces.
Whether as bomb sniffers, trackers or assault support units, the American soldier has no better ally than man’s best friend. My four-legged sidekick is part of this patriotic legacy.
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Our story began in 2018 when I was paired with Dasty — 3 years old at the time — at Fort Huachuca out west. Although we initially worked alongside the base police department, we were soon sent to Missouri for explosive detection training, a 60-day course that taught us to work as a team to uncover deadly weapons. From there, we deployed to Afghanistan.
Dasty and I shared a modest tent at Forward Operating Base Dahlke in the Logar Province, where twin-sized mattresses awaited both of us. My canine partner provided a huge morale boost on base and, as you can imagine, was quite popular among the service members. Other soldiers frequented our tent just to spend time with Dasty — petting sessions that I can assure you he enjoyed just as much as they did.
Beyond bringing comfort to soldiers far from home, Dasty also saved lives. He located enemy IEDs and weapons, which too often prove deadly to American service members, and performed admirably in combat situations. While under enemy contact, Dasty stayed calm and focused.
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After the deployment ended, we returned to the states and were stationed at a military base in Northern Virginia, where Dasty’s important work continued. We participated in multiple Secret Service missions for both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and we also helped train other military canine teams. It was gratifying to see others form such strong bonds with their dogs — a type of relationship that I had come to treasure in my own life.
Finally, in 2022, I said goodbye to the Army to pursue a new career in Wisconsin and spend more time with my family. While I was looking forward to the next phase of my life, the change meant I had to part ways with Dasty, who would remain in the military — a heartbreaking separation that I hoped would not last forever. Thankfully, we had one final chapter.
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When it was time for Dasty to retire two years later, I contacted the American Humane Society — which my wife had heard about — to see if they could help reunite us. The organization stepped up in a big way by flying Dasty from Arlington, Va., to my home in Green Bay, Wisc., and pledging to cover any future veterinary bills. The financial support proved invaluable just a few months ago when the nonprofit paid for a spinal surgery that restored Dasty’s ability to walk.
U.S. military dogs are paws-on-the-ground all around the world — helping safeguard American lives and advance strategic national security interests as we mark 250 years of independence. Dasty is one of these loyal and patriotic heroes who deserves recognition. Now, finally off duty, he can fetch some well-earned rest — and a chew toy.
Trump’s Operation Epic Fury proves Reagan-style peace through strength is back
In just a few days, Operation Epic Fury has eliminated Iran’s leadership, degraded its capacity to terrorize the West, and — for the moment — united the Middle East and most of the world around a vital American interest.
It’s still early, of course. But so far, President Donald Trump has achieved a strategic masterstroke. He has done so by reviving America’s oldest, simplest and best national security policy: peace through strength.
Yet Washington Democrats are blasting the president for ordering the attacks at all. They still cling, bitterly, to President Barack Obama’s delusion of pacifying the Ayatollahs through diplomacy and appeasement, not only lifting sanctions but literally delivering pallets of cash to one of America’s most dangerous enemies. On the other side of the aisle, some principled MAGA conservatives are understandably wary of another forever war in the Middle East.
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But both critiques misapprehend this mission, this commander-in-chief, and his national security strategy.
First, the president’s Go order Friday morning was not a rejection of diplomacy. It was an acknowledgment that diplomacy with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was impossible. Eight American presidents have tried to deal with Iran since the 1979 revolution. After 47 years of theft, murder, and terror, even Donald Trump was forced to acknowledge there was no deal there for America to make.
Diplomacy that isn’t ultimately backstopped by force isn’t diplomacy. It’s weakness — the kind that invites rather than prevents wars.
Once Trump decided to act, he ensured our troops would work hand-in-glove with the region’s most lethal military and best intelligence, courtesy of our friends in Israel.
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Second, Donald Trump is neither a Messianic crusader nor a naive nation-builder. He has been president for five years, and the closest thing to a “forever war” he has ever started was his boycott of the White House Correspondents Dinner – and even that is coming to an end. Trump has been a peaceable president and, indeed, a peace. His military interventions have been uniformly swift, decisive and effective.
Peace through strength is most associated with Ronald Reagan’s approach during the Cold War. But its principles can be seen in the foreign policies — however diverse in application — of Richard Nixon, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, and the Founding generation.
George Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” So is applying overwhelming force to quickly resolve discrete, urgent national threats diplomacy cannot. Trump has hewn closer to both rules than any president in a generation.
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As the Heritage Foundation documents in our new , President Trump has built his administration, our Armed Forces, and his global strategy around the defense of America’s vital interests. Remnants of his predecessors’ globalism and politicization still rattle around the federal budget and nat-sec bureaucracy. But Trump is reforming our military more rapidly and comprehensively than most experts give him credit for.
It’s not luck.
Trump’s pragmatic peace-through-strength approach protects himself, our troops, and our nation from potential quagmires. Even as spirits are running high this week, Trump speaks humbly about the narrow, modest goals of the Iran war: decapitateIran war: decapitate and defang the regime and then hand the country over to the Iranian people.
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No chest-thumping about a New World Order. No cringy, “Islam means peace” pandering. No “cakewalk” hubris. Just a straightforward settling of accounts with the beating heart of global terrorism and the oil-rich co-conspirator in Russian and Chinese mischief.
In a just world, Epic Fury would put an end to the GOP Establishment’s habit of smearing the America First Right as “isolationist.” Conservative critics of Bush-era adventurism were never any such thing. That is why most of us are cheering Trump’s leadership in Iran today.
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A targeted, overwhelming military response to decades of violent aggression and years of diplomatic stonewalling is what peace through strength looks like. So does President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reforms of the Pentagon budget. So do Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s frank, but friendly speeches, at the last two Munich Security Conferences.
Operation Epic Fury, like President Trump’s prior interventions in Iran and Venezuela, do not contradict his peace-brokering in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. They are all applications of peace through strength, the only American foreign policy that has ever really worked.
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Iranian regime spreading anti-Israel propaganda across dozens of social media accounts: report
A new Clemson University report found dozens of social media accounts associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) pushing anti-Israel and anti-U.S. content to sow online discord during the ongoing Iran-U.S. war.
According to a report released Wednesday, at least 62 accounts across X, Bluesky and Instagram were found to have connections to the IRGC despite claiming to be users from the Americas, England, Scotland or Ireland. Though most accounts were less than 1 year old, some were created as far back as December 2023.
“All these accounts systematically amplify politically divisive content and disinformation aligned with IRGC narratives, and they are designed to exploit regional fault lines to advance Iranian regime interests,” the report said.
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Prior to President Donald Trump and Israel’s military strikes against Iran, most accounts largely focused on divisive domestic positions. However, after Feb. 28, once Israel and the U.S. launched surprise airstrikes against Iran, they began pushing pro-Tehran messages in favor of the regime.
“There is a coordinated inauthentic social-media campaign targeting online discourse around the war between Israel, the United States, and Iran,” the report noted.
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The accounts also used several AI-generated images and false videos pushing inaccurate reports on the ongoing strikes.
“It will be important to continue to monitor communities found to be at particular risk of foreign influence to mitigate potential harms to authentic discourse. This is particularly true at times of global crisis,” the report concluded.
In a response to Fox News Digital, Bluesky confirmed that all the accounts listed in the report were taken down for violating community guidelines.
A Meta spokesperson reiterated the company’s stance against content promoting terrorism and pointed out that, of the accounts listed in the report, one third of them were not active during the war while the remaining accounts have fewer than 2,000 followers combined.
“Meta prohibits coordinated inauthentic behavior and individuals and organizations tied to terrorism, and we remove violating accounts once we become aware of them,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Fox News Digital also reached out to X for comment.
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Clemson University located 47 X accounts, nine Instagram accounts and five Bluesky accounts that fell into the IRGC “network.”
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The university found that X accounts alone created 59,403 original posts that were reposted thousands of times with organic engagement by thousands of followers, potentially reaching millions.