Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. Certain Christmas songs have always made me cry. As a largely lapsed Catholic, Bing Crosby’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” touches a nerve, John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” reminds me of the horror of combat, and after spending three holidays fighting in Afghanistan, any version of … Continue reading “Jimmy Stewart’s Not-So-Wonderful Life With PTSD”

Contractors were the bane of my existence. It was first apparent to me in Iraq in 2007, at the height of the civil war. A bunch of Blackwater mercenaries had decided to swing through my assigned sector and shoot up a bunch of civilians in a crowded public square. As they do… The next day … Continue reading “Mercenary Nation: Litigious ‘Solutions’ to Systemic Problems”

They lived in similar squalor, shared the same God, and celebrated the same holidays. It was December 24, 1914, Christmas Eve, and – though they spoke different languages and had ruthlessly killed one another for over four months – the British and German soldiers in the opposing trench lines had much in common. The ruling … Continue reading “Christmas: Time for a Truce”

How, exactly, did I get here? My political journey has somehow taken me from canvassing for Obama north of Fort Knox, KY in 2008, to voting for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary outside of West Point, NY in 2016, to – gulp! – "defending" Trump against impeachment in 2019. What a long, strange, trip … Continue reading “The United States of Impeachment”

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Retired U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen offers a year-ending look at what “forever war” really means in the American experience. To do so, he turns not to the wars in which he personally took part in Afghanistan and Iraq, but to one that took place almost a century before his birth … Continue reading “Remembering America’s First (and Longest) Forgotten War on Tribal Islamists”

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. So now we know that which many of us long surmised. The generals lied, repeatedly; in fact, the whole damn Afghan War was a lie. I wish I could take some pleasure in the vindication, but I can’t seem conjure any. Too many of my own boys died in, … Continue reading “The Generals’ Long Con on Afghanistan”

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. Nightmares still haunt me. Sometimes it’s the standard stuff associated with classic post-traumatic stress disorder: flashbacks of horrible attacks and images of my mutilated troopers. More often, though, peculiar as it may sound, I dream that my sociopathic, career-obsessed colonel calls to give me another late-night order to do … Continue reading “I Knew the War in Afghanistan Was a Lie”

I guess you can say I was raised on the old 1980s-era “Be, All that you can be” U.S. Army recruiting commercials. Cheesy, sure, but they were brilliant. I remember one that embodied the whole series. A racially diverse squad was helicoptered to a lovely green hilltop and proceeded to – almost instantaneously – set … Continue reading “The Real Collusion: How To Recruit for Forever War”

Series note: It has taken me years to tell these stories. The emotional and moral wounds of the Afghan War have just felt too recent, too raw. After all, I could hardly write a thing down about my Iraq War experience for nearly ten years, when, by accident, I churned out a book on the … Continue reading “Potemkin Patrols: Performing the (Afghan) War”

Cold War nostalgia is all the rage these days. The Democratic Party, well at least the MSNBC wing, seems intent on a full tilt replay of the standoff with nuclear-armed Russia. In their bizarre fantasy, Putin is the new Stalin, Trump is apparently a legit Manchurian candidate, and – in a revival of an old-fashioned … Continue reading “The Good, Bad Old Days: Bring Back Cold War Mideast Strategy”