Psalm For The Soldiers Who Said No by Jeff Callaway

Psalm For The Soldiers Who Said No

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

"Woe to them that make wicked laws: and when they write, write injustice: To oppress the poor in judgment, and do violence to the cause of the humble of my people." — Isaias, Chapter X, Verses I–II (Douay-Rheims)

Lord, I am not asking You to be gentle today. I am not coming to You with flowers and incense and soft words. I am coming the way David came after Bathsheba — not with shame, but with the blood of innocents on my boots and the names of the guilty burning in my throat like whiskey poured over an open wound.

I am coming the way the prophets came — Amos standing in the city gate with fire in his belly, Jeremias weeping over a nation that would not hear — I am coming that way, Lord. Texas dirt under my fingernails. A Catholic conscience wrapped in barbed wire. And a God-given rage that I will not apologize for.

So hear me.

There is a school in Minab. The name of that school was Shajareh Tayyebeh — The Good Tree. Say that name. Say it slowly. The Good Tree.

On the morning of February 28, 2026, the first morning of this war that nobody voted for, the first morning of this war that Congress did not authorize, the first morning of this war built on Israeli misinformation fed to a man who claimed he would never start a new one —

on that morning, girls between seven and twelve years old sat in their desks in The Good Tree school in southern Iran and they opened their books.

A Tomahawk cruise missile — American made, American fired — struck them. And when the survivors fled to the prayer room, a second strike came. And a third. Triple-tapped. Children in a prayer room, Lord. They ran to pray and the missiles followed them there.

One hundred sixty-eight children. Twenty-six teachers. Four parents who had come to collect their daughters after the first blast. The roof came down on top of them all.

The roof of the school collapsed on the students. Amnesty International verified that 168 were killed, over 100 of whom were schoolchildren.

Lord of Hosts, I call on You now the way David called on You in Psalm 94 — O Lord, the God of revenge: the God of revenge hath acted freely. I call on You. Do not be silent. Do not look away.

The graves at the Minab Hermud cemetery — over one hundred of them dug by machinery because human hands could not dig fast enough — they cry to You from the ground. The way Abel's blood cried. The way every innocent ever slaughtered cried. And You heard. You always hear.

So let me speak now of the men and women who heard too.

Let me speak of Joe Kent.

Green Beret. Eleven combat tours. Six Bronze Stars. Director of the National Counterterrorism Center of the United States of America. A man who bled for this country more times than most men have stood up for anything.

He posted on X and resigned effective immediately, writing: "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

They called him weak for that. Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office — the same Oval Office where he promised the American people no new wars — and said Joe Kent was weak on security.

No, Mr. President. A man who completed eleven combat deployments and then laid down his career, his post, and his position rather than carry forward a lie — that is not weakness. That is the definition of moral courage. That is what we used to call an American.

Joe Kent told the truth that the powerful did not want told: that high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined an honest assessment of the threat, and that this echo chamber was used to deceive the President into believing Iran posed an imminent threat with a clear path to victory.

Tulsi Gabbard — who herself once said that war with Iran would make Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic — when pressed by the Senate Intelligence Committee on whether Iran had rebuilt its nuclear program, admitted in her opening statement that Iran did not rebuild its nuclear program after the U.S. and Israel struck its nuclear facilities in June 2025. No nukes, Lord. They told us nukes. There were no nukes.

And yet the bombs fell on The Good Tree.

Now let me speak of the ones whose names we may never know.

Mike Prysner, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, said: "We have a situation where Trump and his team have launched an unprovoked war with no legitimate rationale, no rational justification, and in partnership with a military that has just committed a genocide in the region. They have imposed this on the American people, the Iranian people and tens of thousands of service members and their families who believe this is deeply wrong. We have had about a 1,000% increase in CO clients just since the beginning of the war."

A thousand percent.

Lenore Yarger, a counselor from the GI Rights Hotline at Quaker House, said her organization received 212 calls in the first half of March 2026 alone — a number it would normally see over an entire month. She said the school bombing in Minab and "concern about the leadership" were the most frequent reasons for service members seeking to conscientiously object, and that calls were coming from service members in all branches of the military.

All branches. Army. Navy. Air Force. Marines. Prysner said his group has spoken with service members ranging in rank from major to private, including three fighter pilots.

Three fighter pilots, Lord. Men trained to fly fast and fire hard who looked at the order and said — not this. Not a girls' school. Not a lie.

And one unnamed service member — one we know only by his conscience — called the hotline and told them: he reports widespread opposition to the Iran war within his unit and conveyed disgust at the US massacre of the girls' school as well as the attack on an Iranian frigate in international waters.

He is filing as a conscientious objector. He is sharing the hotline number with everyone in his unit.

Lord, write his name in the Book of Life even if no newspaper ever prints it. Write it where Herod's generals' names are not written. Write it where the names of every soldier who refused to participate in evil are written in gold.

Let me tell you about Stephen Funk.

Former Marine. Refused to deploy to Iraq in 2003. Spent time in the brig for his conscience. In the years after his discharge, he worked with anti-war groups to promote peace and help other veterans reintegrate. He told The Intercept he has been horrified to see the U.S. yet again charging into a war that has already killed hundreds of civilians.

He sat in a military prison for his conscience once. And he is still standing. Still speaking. Still bearing witness.

That, Lord, is what we once called an American. That is what the Roman Catholic Church calls the primacy of conscience.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 2242, says plainly: The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel.

Saint Thomas Aquinas taught it before the Catechism codified it — that an unjust law is no law at all. Lex iniusta non est lex.

And the conditions for a just war — laid out in CCC 2309 — require that the damage inflicted by the aggressor be lasting, grave, and certain. That all other means of ending conflict have been exhausted. That there be serious prospects of success. That the use of arms not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Iran was in peace negotiations. Kent's resignation letter stated he supports the foreign policies Trump campaigned on, and that Iran posed no imminent threat to the nation.

They were talking peace. We sent Tomahawks. This war does not meet a single condition of Just War Doctrine. Not one.

Lord, let me now call before Your throne the names of those accountable.

Donald John Trump — who campaigned in 2016, 2020, and 2024 on no new wars, who spoke of bringing the boys home, who let the most powerful foreign lobby on American soil drag this nation into a war against a country that posed no imminent nuclear threat, that had no nuclear weapons rebuilt, that was actively pursuing peace — let him stand before You and answer.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee — and every lobbying dollar that purchased access to the ear of power — let them stand before You and answer.

Pete Hegseth — who dismantled the Pentagon office responsible for preventing civilian casualties before the bombs ever fell, who then stood at a podium and said we never target civilians — let him stand before You and answer.

Every senator and representative who voted down the bill to rein in this war — who chose party over children in a prayer room — let them stand before You and answer.

And let the government of Israel — which has learned nothing from the memory of its own persecution and now bombs children in their classrooms and tells the world it knows nothing about it — let them stand before You and answer.

The Lord our God is not mocked. He was watching on February 28. He sees the graves still being dug. He hears the mothers in Minab. He counts every hair on every head of every girl between seven and twelve who went to The Good Tree school that morning and did not come home.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay. Romans, Chapter XII, Verse XIX. He said it. I believe it.

But now — now I turn from the powerful to the powerless, from the condemned to the honored, and I want to speak to every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, every intelligence officer, every analyst, every planner who looked at this and said no.

You are not alone.

You stand in a line that runs all the way back to two women named Shiphrah and Puah — Hebrew midwives in Egypt who received a direct order from Pharaoh to kill every Hebrew boy child at birth. Exodus, Chapter I. They refused. They told Pharaoh a lie to his face to protect the innocent. And the Scripture says — God dealt well with the midwives. And because the midwives feared God, he built them houses.

That is who you are. That is the company you are in. Shiphrah and Puah. They had no pension to lose. They had no discharge status to protect. They had only their conscience and their God. And they chose their God.

You who are filing those papers in the hours before deployment — you who are calling hotlines from base housing at midnight — you who are ranks from major to private — you who strap on six Bronze Stars and still say not this war —

you are the Hebrew midwives. You are Elias fleeing Jezebel on feet that will not stop moving toward God. You are the three young men in the furnace who told Nebuchadnezzar to his face: We will not bow down. Daniel, Chapter III.

And like them — like all of them — history will remember your names long after it has forgotten the names of the men who gave the orders.

America, listen to me.

We are not broke because of Iran. We are not unsafe because of Iran. We are broke because we keep buying wars that were never ours to fight, sending the children of the poor and the working class as ammunition for the ambitions of men who will never have a son or daughter in that uniform.

The American people are ready — ready — for leadership that comes home. For a foreign policy that puts families in Beaumont and Lubbock and Knoxville and Flint ahead of lobbying offices on K Street. For a government that uses our money to fix our roads, heal our veterans, feed our poor, house our homeless, and leave other nations to work out their own salvation the way God left us to work out ours.

Trump promised that. We believed it. We voted for it. And the bombs fell on The Good Tree.

That is the betrayal we are living in. That is the fire that is burning the conscience of the American military one soldier at a time.

Lord, have mercy on the children of Minab. Receive them into Your arms — those little girls who only wanted to open their books that morning — receive them as You received the Holy Innocents, who also died at the order of a powerful man who had been told there was a threat that did not exist.

Herod called it security. Pilate called it order. And they both sent children to their deaths.

Some things do not change.

Lord, have mercy on the soldiers who said no. Protect them. Keep their careers if You can. Keep their freedom. But if it costs them everything — be their pension. Be their rank. Be their honor. Be the only medal worth anything in the end.

And Lord — one more thing.

Let this psalm find the right eyes. Let it find a soldier at a laptop at midnight trying to figure out how to say no without losing everything. Let it find a mother trying to understand why her son called her from a base in the Middle East crying into a phone she could barely hear. Let it find a senator who still has a soul underneath the fundraising.

Let it find anyone with enough conscience left to know that children in prayer rooms are not acceptable losses.

They are not collateral. They are His. Every one.

And He is watching. He is always watching. And He will repay.

The Lord is a God of knowledge, and to him thoughts are weighed. — I Kings, Chapter II, Verse III (Douay-Rheims)

Come, Lord. Come quickly. Bring justice. Bring it Texas-style — swift, final, and without apology.

Amen.

~Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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