In the first week of our war on Iran, Americans have been subjected to a series of highly produced videos released through the White House communication apparatus showing military strikes. At the same time, the political leaders most important in wartime have engaged more in swagger than explanation. This “messaging”—circulated on social media and repeated during press briefings by President Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and others—is less the sober reporting of combat operations and more like something drawn from a video game highlight reel.1

Those of us who have served have a term for this kind of imagery and rhetoric: “war porn.” That phrase captures a troubling trend in how war is increasingly presented to the American public—stylized, dramatic, titillating, and not at all like the real thing. Videos like these strip away the gravity that should accompany decisions involving sending men and women into harm’s way, potentially to their deaths.

I’m not the target audience for these clips: I’m a boomer and a combat veteran, so maybe I don’t understand how this kind of content appeals to younger audiences raised on digital media and immersive graphics. But generational preference doesn’t matter when you’re speaking about the seriousness of war.

War is not entertainment. It is not a meme. It is not a cinematic product designed to generate likes and shares. And it should not be influenced by partisan language or hyperbolic and unrealistic statements. War is the realm of the profession of arms, where young Americans—our sons and daughters—carry out missions that involve lethal force under strict legal and ethical obligations.

The way leaders communicate about those missions matters.

During recent press conferences, the secretary of defense has paired slick and meaningless videos with familiar talking points—phrases that repeat the mantras of “the most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen,” the “restrictive, minimalist rules of engagement,” or the need to avoid “politically correct wars of the past.” These phrases may be politically effective because they resonate with audiences already inclined to believe that the military has historically been constrained by timid civilian leadership.

But they are also misleading.

Yes, our military is first-rate and extremely lethal; it has been for years, and little has changed with this administration. Rules of engagement have never been bureaucratic obstacles imposed to handicap the military; they are tools developed by commanders and military lawyers to ensure that force is applied lawfully and strategically, in accordance with the laws of armed conflict, and to avoid war crimes and the misapplication of violence. Far from restricting effectiveness, they help ensure that tactical actions support strategic objectives. Showing “no mercy,” as a graphic posted by the Department of Defense yesterday proclaimed, may be a way to rack up a kill count, but it’s no way to isolate your enemies, multiply your allies, and win a war.

The same is true of the phrase “forever wars.” It’s a powerful political slogan, but it often obscures more than it explains. Wars become prolonged not because soldiers are overly cautious or politically correct, but because the political objectives behind them are unclear, shifting, or unrealistic.

Sound bites may work in campaign speeches. They are a poor substitute for explaining what the military is doing to our nation’s citizens, most of whom don’t understand the details of combat operations.

There is another problem with turning combat footage into social media content: credibility.

For generations, the American military has tried to maintain a professional distance from domestic political messaging. Updates on operations have traditionally come from commanders, Pentagon briefings, or reporting by journalists embedded with units in the field. The purpose was to inform the public and explain the strategic context—not to produce dramatic visuals for political consumption.

When the White House communications team becomes the primary producer of war imagery, that balance shifts. Especially when most of those producing the videos have never experienced combat. The line between informing the public and promoting a narrative becomes blurred. And that’s dangerous.

Behind every strike video is a chain of command, months or years of training, and the possibility that someone—on our side or the other—does not come home. Those realities rarely show up in slickly edited footage.

The profession of arms is built on discipline, responsibility, and a profound respect for the destructive power entrusted to those who serve. Military leaders understand that using force is sometimes necessary. But they also understand it should never be trivialized or packaged in slick messaging that does not represent what is really happening. Americans deserve to know what their military is doing. And the military, in order to maintain its edge over our adversaries, needs Americans to have an accurate, if not thorough, idea of what it is that those in uniform do and are doing. Transparency matters in a democracy because that candor should illuminate the reality of war, not turn it into a spectacle.

When the imagery of combat begins to look like a video game highlight reel, or when a press briefing uses partisan talking points in place of strategy, we risk forgetting what war is—and what it costs the young Americans of all political backgrounds whom we ask to fight it.