I first ran for office after one of our SEALs, an American hero, didn't come home from a raid in Yemen. That raid was wrecklessly conceived, irresponsibly ordered, and stubbornly pursued. This week's attack on an Iranian General appears to be of the same vein.

I've been hesitant to talk about this, mainly because I have friends in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf as I write this and our first reaction as Americans must be (now and always) to ensure their safety. The Iranian regime has American blood on its hands, they are not our friends, and they purposefully play a destabilizing role in the region. As an officer in the US Navy who has deployed to the Middle East three times, I've spent 10 years of my life training and preparing for this fight.

Let's make a few things clear. First, the government's primary concern should be the safety of our American forces currently deployed in the region. Like me, they signed up to protect and defend our Constitution regardless of the politics. We can reasonably disagree with the military strategy, but we stand with our troops.

Second, I haven't seen the specific intelligence so these are obviously my personal opinions. At some level, we need to be able to trust our leaders who have information we do not. What makes this situation so troubling is that it happened during the impeachment votes, after three years of well-documented lies., and when there was no reason to upset so the status quo that has kept the region relatively peaceful over the last few months.

One important thing to remember is that just as America has internal politics, so does Iran. By killing the General, the US has made a martyr of a hardliner who sought conflict with the US and Israel. The U.S. strategy for years has been to marginalize the hardliners and prop up moderates who, with time and support, can rise to lead Iran in a more peaceful direction.

The US immediate reaction needs to be to deescalate the situation. Ensuring our forces are in positions to defend themselves and ordering proper alert statuses make sense here, but we should also ensure that we do nothing more to be perceived as aggressors. Thankfully, as of the last 12 hours at least, it appears this the stable peace is holding.

The strike was bad not just because it has united the Iranian people behind hardliners and painted American forces in the Middle East as aggressors, but also because it's weakened our hand in the region. Due to just one act, we've been expelled from Iraq after 18 years of hard-won gains. This threatens ISIS advances, cedes Iraq to Iranian influence, and makes us weaker vis-a-vis our remaining regional allies. Also, with Iran completely out of the nuclear agreement, there's little hope for renegotiating a deal that will prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Let's all agree that that Iran with nukes is worse than Iran without nukes.

Obvious things that should not be ignored: targeting cultural sites would constitute a war crime and we should not do that (obviously). Fox News' attempt to drag Obama back into this and distract from Trump's blunder are flatly wrong. And saying that we should protect American forces and maintain forward positions in the region does not mean that we favor forever wars.

In the last week, we've sent approximately 10,000 additional US troops to the region. This is exactly the opposite of our long-term strategy of getting disentangled from the region and what we Americans were promised when Trump ran for office.

It's a mess. I pray for all Americans and our allies in the region and I pray for peace. This is the last thing we need right now.