Americans have a dysfunctional relationship with 21st-century wars. Most of us do not fight in them, see the carnage or live with their physical and psychological ruins. Yet we cannot heal our own nation unless we reckon with their monstrous futility. For Graham Platner, that reckoning began when he was a 20-year-old infantryman in Iraq. His company was constructing a patrol base near Falluja. To build it, they hired locals who often brought their kids to the work site. One day, a mortar round fired by insurgents landed where they were congregated. There can be no more senseless death than losing a child, a reality Mr. Platner had to confront as he administered first aid and then encountered distraught parents at a casualty collection point. He still remembers the sight, smell and feel of those lost children, as well as the anguish in their parents’ eyes.

Mr. Platner recalled this experience to me as he drove his truck through Maine, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for Senate. Last fall, his candidacy was rocked by revelations from his past. As a young Marine, he got a skull and bones tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol (he denied knowing its meaning). His history on Reddit includes offensive comments that he attributes to a long process of dealing with the trauma of war. Yet while Democratic insiders in Washington were prepared to write him off, today he packs town halls, and polls show him leading Gov. Janet Mills of Maine by around 30 points. One reason for this success is that Mr. Platner sounds radically honest by the standards of American politics, including when he talks about his own service. “There’s this thing I often think about,” he said, recalling the incident near Falluja. “Those kids were killed because we were spending money to build this base that probably doesn’t exist anymore.” His voice slipped into the present tense as he put himself back into the moment when the mothers arrived to pick up the remains, his own life in front of him like a storm cloud. “How horrifically wasteful this is.”

…Visceral outrage over that reality infuses Mr. Platner’s opposition to the war in Iran. Sure, at campaign stops, he talks about high gas prices and the Trump administration’s incompetence. But the core of his message is an unflinching disgust for the forever war we have waged since 9/11. “Nobody is going to be able to convince me that what I did in Iraq and Afghanistan did anything for the people of Sullivan, Maine,” he told me, punctuating his point with an obscenity. “I don’t want other young Americans to go through what I’ve been through. And I don’t want to send other young Americans to inflict the horror that I had to inflict on people.”

…Some Democrats do express a sense of moral outrage and urgency over the war: Ro Khanna, Jason Crow and Yassamin Ansari in the House, or Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen or Tim Kaine in the Senate. But many others, including the party’s leadership in Congress, have shown less passion in opposing the war than they bring to fights over Obamacare subsidies. Turn on right-wing commentators like Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly and you hear a more aggressive stance. Mr. Platner has a particular scorn for this dynamic. He decried party leaders who focus on President Trump’s failure to seek congressional authorization: “There’s a big difference between saying the war shouldn’t be happening because it is bad and saying the war shouldn’t be happening because they didn’t ask permission.” He lamented the tendency to leaven statements against the war with lengthy condemnations of the Iranian regime that “lay the ideological and propaganda basis” for what Mr. Trump is doing. He also noted rightly that many Democrats have been longtime hawks on Iran, supporters of the Israeli government and allies with pro-war groups such as AIPAC.

All this undercuts Democrats’ ability to credibly argue for a fundamental shift in the nation’s priorities. The same dynamic applies to defense spending. For decades, Democrats joined Republicans in voting for an ever-growing Pentagon budget. Now, Mr. Trump has proposed an eye-popping $1.5 trillion in spending for his “Department of War” on top of the $200 billion the Pentagon has already requested for his war in Iran. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise, and cuts to health care, education and much else have left communities struggling to fill the gap.

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