Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

Alex should have never been asked to accomplish the impossible. But he was. We all were. Thing is, if anyone could have done it – "beat" the Taliban and brought home a win for the US of A – it’d have been my friend Alex. Sure, I’m biased. He was a star platoon leader and … Continue reading “Forever War?: Lieutenant Alex and the Limits of American Courage”

On paper, Rachel Maddow may be the brightest host on all of cable news. Educated first at Stanford and then earning a PhD as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, she’s an eloquent speaker and distinguished author. But these days Maddow and her fellow "mainstream" progressives at MSNBC and CNN sound like hysterical, bellicose neocons. … Continue reading “The ‘Left’ Gone Mad: Mainstream Liberals as Modern Day Warhawks”

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. The United States of America conquered half of Mexico. There isn’t any way around that fact. The regions of the U.S. most affected by “illegal” immigration—California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas—were once part of the Republic of Mexico. They would have remained so if not for the Mexican-American War … Continue reading “The Fraudulent Mexican-American War (1846-48)”

Numbness or apathy. These seem to be Americans’ go-to responses when each new overseas tragedy unfolds. Recently, it was a bus full of Yemeni children – 40 in fact – killed by a Saudi airstrike that represented one tiny speck of catastrophe in an ongoing U.S.-backed coalition campaign. Sure, the dead kids briefly hit the … Continue reading “Dying for What?: A Tour of Fruitless American Killing and Sacrifice”

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. “Strange indeed did it appear to me to find so many names, familiar household words, as enemies—the very names of officers in our own army. … How uncomfortably like a civil war.” —British Lt. John Le Couteur upon visiting an American Army camp (1813) Americans, sadly, know little of … Continue reading “The Forgotten and Peculiar War of 1812”

This is all very intimate for me; hard to speak on, really. Suffice it to say that this middling soldier gave his youth, and innocence, to what we used to call the Global War on Terror (GWOT). I left several of my boys in the meaningless streets and fields of Iraq and Afghanistan: five killed … Continue reading “A Personal Message from Major Danny Sjursen”

This article originally appeared at TruthDig. We used to call him “Mookie.” God, we hated him. Back in 2006-07, while patrolling the streets of east Baghdad, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia was our sworn enemy. These impoverished, slum-dwelling Shiite youths hit us with sniper fire and deadly improvised explosive devices day after day. They killed … Continue reading “The Tragic Record of American Regime Change”

One minute he’s threatening nuclear war via tweet; the next his adoring followers are chanting "Nobel, Nobel!" at one of his ubiquitous, campaign-style rallies. It’s hard to keep up with President Trump’s North Korea policy, such as it is. First thing’s first: though I’ve been a regular critic of this administration, I fully support the … Continue reading “Skip the Fire and Fury: Avoiding a Cataclysmic War With North Korea”

"The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. The behavior and the objectives of the [Iranian] regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!" ~ National … Continue reading “Unwarranted Hysteria: The Iranian Threat Is Inflated and Regional War Would Be a Disaster”

"After the first death, there is no other." ~ Dylan Thomas I’m ashamed. It’s 5:55 AM and I wake up for one more of my last few days in the army – the end of middling soldier’s career – here at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The BBC (I refuse to watch mainstream American news in 2018) is … Continue reading “A Veteran’s Gaza Stream-of-Consciousness: Just What’ve I Been Fighting For?”