Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

Real talk: Joe Biden hasn’t had too many finest hours in his 47 years plus years on the national scene. To be fair, he’s had his moments – like a powerful, earthy, and impassioned 1986 speech he delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposing the Reagan administration’s apologism for the "repulsive, repugnant" Afrikaner apartheid … Continue reading “Joe’s Just Gotta Let Us Know: Will He Stay or Will He Go?”

The Intercept labeled it a "dramatic policy shift.” And here’s hoping it’s that. Still, President Joe Biden’s announcement – during his first major foreign policy address – that he would end American support for Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led "offensive operations" in Yemen, needs more nuance. In the second month of 2021, it seems all but … Continue reading “Biden’s Bolt From Yemen?: Symbolic Step, Systemic Limits, and Linguistic Gymnastics”

In Africa, Islamic State, and other Islamists, are just the tip of an underlying conflicts iceberg. Still, for decades, French Titanics – fueled by America – have rammed the symptomatic spire whilst ignoring the subsurface bulk of problems Paris largely caused or catalyzed. As for those running that nuance-free Emerald City of Washington – they’ve … Continue reading “Backing France’s African Adventures: What Could Go Wrong?… Everything”

Originally posted at TomDispatch. More than 19 years ago, the U.S. launched the air war that would become the ground invasion and “liberation” of Afghanistan. More than 17 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared “major combat” over in that country with just 8,000 US troops still stationed there. Approximately nine years after that, … Continue reading “Peering Into a Forever-War Crystal Ball”

Long before he played various roles in the Obama administration, Robert Berschinski was described as among the “rarest of creatures.” For starters, he was an R.O.T.C. cadet at an Ivy League school – Yale – on September 11, 2001, at a time when graduates of elite universities have been conspicuously absent from the military’s ranks. … Continue reading “ISIS-Africa Alarmism: Brought to You Context-Free by Defense Analysts”

This past August, a U.S. military-trained African army officer staged a coup in an impoverished country – Mali – wracked by violence that’s long been folded under the opportunist umbrella of a global war on terror. Washington subsequently feigned surprise, pretended chagrin, suspended some aid – and quietly continued to back the new regime and … Continue reading “In Other News: Another Franco-American Forever War Failing in Africa – Mali Edition”

Recently on Twitter, a someone graciously dubbed me a "prophet" after rereading my April article arguing that "American Exceptionalism Scars Both Victim and Victimizer" – and which pivoted around actual philosophical prophet, Ms. Simone Weil. This social media follower, "TheAyatollaOfRocknRolla," is clearly a man of cinematic allusion – to 1981’s Mad Max 2: The Road … Continue reading “The [Neocon] Empire Strikes Back: Victoria Nuland, and the Kagans Who Love Her”

Ethiopia has pursued "legitimate" military action in its Tigray province since early November, according Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union (AU) Commission. Maybe. It does seem that the northern state’s regional forces – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – attacked federal military bases on November 4 and may even have executed … Continue reading “‘There Won’t Be Snow in Africa This Christmas’ – But There Will Be US-Enabled War Crimes”

There’s a whole mess of bloody messes around the world that few Americans care about. In fact, they could form a whole category of conflict labeled: "Top Ten Violent Hot Spots You’ve Never Heard Of (But Should Have)." The list might include, for starters, Nigeria’s resource war between herders and farmers (six times deadlier than … Continue reading “Eastern [African] Exposure: Ethiopia, Ethnicity, and other Kindling for Tigray’s Backstory”

Originally posted at TomDispatch. TomDispatch is essentially a no-submissions site. The only exception I’ve made over the years has been for those in the U.S. military or retired from it who, miraculously enough, became critical of it and the forever wars that it so relentlessly pursued. I’ve always felt that they had something of importance … Continue reading “Spilling Ink and Spilling Blood”