With fighting showing no signs of slowing down, Florida Representative Brian Mast watches the conflict in Iran with a vested interest. Few members of Congress see this conflict through a more personal lens. Mast lost both of his legs in Afghanistan, something he thinks about often.
“I think about it from time to time,” the congressman tells CBN News. “I think about it when I put my legs on in the morning and set out to walking around the day.”
He calls it his “alive day.”
“As I was going out into the dark of night that evening, I found an improvised explosive device in a way that I didn’t want to. I remember everything about it detonating beneath my feet and losing my legs. But the point that I tell everybody to fast forward a little bit through that story is that the last thing I remember from the evening is when I’m being loaded onto a helicopter. And my men, as we’re trained to prevent shock, and, ‘You’re going to be all right, you’re going to be OK.’ That’s something that we do when you’re on the battlefield and somebody is injured. And the last thing I remember from that night is them telling me those things and they’re loading me onto a helicopter and they give me one last salute and they tell me, ‘You’re gonna be okay.’ And the fact of the matter is I am okay today. I am okay today for three very specific reasons. My God, my country, and my family.”
After recovery, he volunteered with the Israeli Defense Forces, the only congressman ever to do so. He helped prepare medical supplies on the front lines.
Mast spoke with CBN News more than a decade ago about his service. “We’re packaging narcotics that can be used like morphine, tourniquet,” he said more than a decade ago. “We’re packaging IVs. These are all things combat medics carry with them. I myself had three tourniquets placed on me when I was injured. This is the kind of stuff they need.”
So, looking back, what was that experience like for him and how does it inform his views today about what’s going on in Iran?
“One of the most impactful parts of that experience was being hosted by families over the weekend,” Mast tells CBN News. “When you’re with these families each weekend over Shabbat, things like that, what you realize is that every last family is waiting for a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter, somebody to come home for that Shabbat meal. And the point that I’m making is everybody there is affected by conflict. Everybody there is affected by military service and that demand to go out there and defend your country.”
Today, Mast is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as the U.S. and Israel target Iran daily, he says the stakes are clear.
“Finally, Americans are being avenged. And finally, you have an administration that says, we’re going to destroy every single piece of Iranian military hardware that exists…This is a response to what has been taking place against us for decades with an administration that has the stones to say, ‘This comes to an end.'”
When it comes to the question of U.S. troops being sent into Iran — Mast points in a different direction. “My view is that the boots on the ground need to be 90 million Iranian boots on the ground that are choosing a different path,” says Congressman Mast. “Because if they’re not choosing a different path, then it doesn’t matter about American boots on the ground in that way.”
Important counsel from a man who has seen war up close.
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