After ISIS killed American troops last weekend, U.S. forces launched a wide-ranging strike package that hammered more than 70 Islamic State targets across central Syria. Fighters, weapons caches, command nodes—anything tied to ISIS and still standing was fair game.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave it a blunt name: Operation Hawkeye Strike.
“This is not the beginning of a war,” Hegseth said. “It is a declaration of vengeance. Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.”
This wasn’t theory or chest-thumping. It was about two American sergeants who didn’t come home.
The Army identified them Monday as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, both were Iowa National Guardsmen. They were killed in an ISIS-linked attack on a joint U.S.-Syrian convoy near Palmyra. A civilian interpreter was also killed. Three other U.S. soldiers were wounded.
Names matter. These weren’t anonymous “personnel.” They were noncommissioned officers—working sergeants—operating forward in a place where loyalty is thin, alliances are temporary, and the enemy never really goes away.
The retaliation was heavy and deliberate. U.S. F-15s and A-10s flew the strike missions, backed by Apache attack helicopters and HIMARS rocket artillery. Jordanian fighter jets joined the operation, a reminder that this wasn’t a lone-wolf response but coordinated coalition warfare.
Roughly 1,000 U.S. troops remain in Syria, tasked with preventing Islamic State from rebuilding the shadow networks it once used to seize territory and terrorize civilians. That mission continues despite the risks—and despite the fact that Syria’s security forces themselves remain an uneven mix of former rebels, rebranded militants, and holdovers from a shattered state.
Syrian officials described the attacker as a member of their own security forces suspected of ISIS sympathies. That detail alone explains why American troops still operate with their heads on a swivel.
Syria’s current government—led by former rebels who toppled Bashar al-Assad after a 13-year civil war—supported the strikes.
The operation wasn’t about optics or escalation management. It was about Sgt. Torres-Tovar and Sgt. Howard.
Kill Americans, and this is what follows.