THE PENTAGON — Following the rollout of its new “Send Me” military service campaign, the Pentagon unveiled a companion initiative this week called "Send Someone Else” aimed at lawmakers, political appointees, wealthy families, and other Americans who strongly support the Iran war but would prefer not to personally participate in it.

“Look, we understand the concern,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said. “The war is unpopular, expensive, increasingly difficult to supply, and has no obvious end state. Naturally, the people who support it most enthusiastically want reassurance that none of this will affect them personally.”

Parnell said Pentagon lawyers had therefore established several Protected Classes exempt from the “Send Me” ethos.

“First off, nobody from the executive or legislative branches is deploying,” he said. “These people are far too important to the war effort.”

Parnell pointed to Vice President JD Vance, whose family recently sought military helicopter transportation to get his son to a golf lesson, as an example.

“That’s exactly the sort of sacrifice we need from leadership,” Parnell said. “Military aviation has to support the whole force.”

Members of Congress also qualify automatically.

“The late Lindsey Graham spent decades advocating military action against Iran,” Parnell said. “Unfortunately, he passed away before we could process his deployment waiver, which Pentagon lawyers assure me was already very close to approval.”

Officials said lawmakers who nevertheless volunteer to deploy will be thanked for their patriotism and immediately assigned to a blue-ribbon commission studying whether somebody else should go instead.

The Trump family has also received blanket exemptions.

“Eric and Don Jr. are supporting the war effort through investments in defense technology,” Parnell said. “It would be incredibly inefficient to put them in uniform when they can contribute from whichever side of the procurement process is more profitable.”

Barron Trump, 20, is also old enough to enlist, but officials said his new energy-drink venture provides an essential warfighting capability.

“Junior enlisted troops need caffeine,” Parnell said. “That’s practically logistics.”

Word of the exemptions initially generated excitement among troops already deployed to the Middle East.

“I’ve been at sea so long I’m starting to think Norfolk was something I dreamed about as a child,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 3rd Class Aaron Brady aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. “When I heard about ‘Send Someone Else,’ I thought maybe someone else was finally coming.”

Parnell quickly corrected the misunderstanding.

“No,” he said. “Someone still has to fight the war.”

According to the Pentagon, eligibility for Protected Class status generally increases in direct proportion to a person’s ability to influence whether the country goes to war in the first place.

“We’re behind our warfighters 100%,” Parnell said. “About 7,000 miles behind them, in most cases.”

He added that troops participating in “Send Me” receive substantial benefits unavailable to Protected Classes, including combat experience, prolonged family separation, exposure to Iranian missiles, and the opportunity to someday explain to their grandchildren why the enemy had to be destroyed 58 separate times.

“And if you make the ultimate sacrifice, America will remember you forever,” Parnell said. “Unless you die during a ceasefire, after the official operational window, or under some other circumstance requiring us to move you to a different spreadsheet.”

At press time, the Pentagon announced a third campaign aimed at defense contractors called “Send More.”