CEDAR FALLS - When Pete Hegseth left Iraq after serving with the 101st Airborne Division in 2005 and 2006, he was frustrated with how the conflict was going.

There weren't enough troops, and those who were there were stationed outside of the cities, unable to get to know the Iraqi citizens.

He was frustrated, but he didn't doubt the mission. He brought his message to veterans and University of Northern Iowa students as part of the Vets for Freedom Heroes Tour at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center Wednesday.

After the 2007 troop surge, Hegseth and others in Vets for Freedom see progress in Iraq. They want the military to be able to finish the job.

The National Heroes Tour, working its way from California to New York, comes as the war marks its fifth year and as U.S. troop deaths passed 4,000.

"How do we go forward and ensure that these gains that we've fought so hard and lost so much for are not lost?" Hegseth said.

David Bellavia, who has been nominated for the Medal of Honor for his service with the 1st Infantry Division in Fallujah in 2004, said he wasn't on the tour to defend why the war started but to tell why his friends died.

He talked of finding execution chambers after clearing neighborhoods in house-to-house fighting against an enemy obsessed with the idea of dying in jihad.

For Robert Schneider, an associate professor of social work at UNI on Wednesday's panel, the question is what should the country do now.

"We should stay until the war is done … when Iraq is stable," Schneider said.

Even after that, he sees the United States remaining in Iraq for decades - as in Germany after World War II - as a way to maintain stability in the region.

Ranya Ahmed, a political science major from the island nation of Bahrain with family in Iraq, said Americans rarely considers the Iraqi citizen deaths.

"There is a whole other world this is affecting," she said.

She said the fighting builds resentment between the sides, leading to long-term problems.

"I think it does matter how we got there, because you don't want to repeat history," Ahmed said.

Bellavia told her some of the militants he fought would want to kill her parents for intermarriage - her mother is a Shiite from Saudi Arabia and her father is a Sunni from Iraq.

"I want to stand between someone trying to kill you and your country," he told her.

Katherine van Wormer, a UNI sociology professor who is against the war, said the conflict's cost goes beyond the 4,000 troops killed and includes suicide, domestic violence and an economic cost.

Other veterans taking part in the panel were Tom Parks, a retired Marine chief warrant officer, and Jeremiah Workman, an active-duty Marine sergeant who earned the Navy Cross.

Earlier in the week, a Minnesota high school backed out of being a Vets for Freedom tour stop because of fears it would turn into a political event. The group instead visited an American Legion Post in the same city, said Hegseth, who graduated from the high school.

Contact Jeff Reinitz at (319) 291-1578 or jeff.reinitz@wcfcourier.com.