Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

Originally appeared at ScheerPost America’s first black presumptive secretary of defense grew up in the same town – Thomasville, GA – as the first black West Point graduate, Henry O. Flipper. I actually took select cadets from my civil rights history class to visit the southwest Georgia city on an academic trip in the summer … Continue reading “Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: A Certain Kind of Diversity”

Eric Garris and Scott Horton let me write pretty much anything I want. Maybe it shows. OK, we all know it does. That’s rarer than it might seem. Outside of the occasional tease about my vague left-leanings from that Antiwar.com CEO-editorial director combo, they’ve a knack for finding, guiding, and then trusting folks like me … Continue reading “The Right Side of History: Support Antiwar.com – Truth’s Quarter-Century Treasure Trove”

Originally appeared at ScheerPost Harry Truman. That’s who Jake Sullivan listed as his “political hero/inspiration,” in a Time Magazine “40 Under 40” profile. Fed a question so vague that he could’ve chosen anyone from Cleopatra to Clinton, that Sullivan selected a consummate product of Kansas City’s backroom “machine” politics, and liberal hawk exemplar, is more … Continue reading “Biden’s Young Hawk: The Case Against Jake Sullivan”

Predictions are tricky matters in world affairs – and as it turns out, prescience produces little in the way of public or personal vindication. There’s scant satisfaction when one’s subjects tend towards the tragic. Take the (for now) paused 44-day war in the South Caucasus. Back in an October interview, I offered this (then) seemingly … Continue reading “Dangerous Precedent: Military Force Works (For Some)”

In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as "Ding dong! The witch is dead!" or "We got robbed!" Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise … Continue reading “What If They Held an Election and Nothing Changed in the War State?”

This originally appeared at The Baraza. “Well, we like war. We’re a war-like people,” the comedian George Carlin, whom I’ve been missing of late, pronounced way back in 1992, on the heels of America’s triumphalist First Persian Gulf War “victory.” The cheers from his dedicated fanbase crowd aside, George’s wasn’t a popular view at the … Continue reading “The Things We Know, But Do Not Say, About the Costs of American War”

Beware savvy, sophisticate liberals bearing gifts of evasive and ethically empty prose. Having, for my sins, spent a few weeks reading just about everything on offer from what unrepentant neocon zealot – and born-again Washington Post columnist – Max Boot dubbed Joe Biden’s foreign policy "A-Team," I can vouch for the new transition team’s vapidity … Continue reading “Max Boot’s Revenge: Biden’s ‘A-Team’ in Their Own Words”

It’s one hell of an inversion. The colonels and generals who commanded at high levels during my 2011-12 Afghan surge tour may have lost the war, but they sure won the personal prosperity battle. The military campaign – strategically, at least – wasn’t even close this time around. Whereas the first surge I had the … Continue reading “Where Are They Now? Leaders From My Afghan Tour Are on to Bigger and Bankable Things”

I had a horror of the Mexican War … only I had not the moral courage enough to resign. ~ Ulysses S. Grant (1879) The phrase “regime change wars” has, of late, taken on profound meaning and stoked massive controversy. When either Donald Trump, or the current long-shot hopeful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) calls for an end to such … Continue reading “The Tortured Legacy of the Mexican-American War”

"Global Thunder: Bombers practice for nuclear war." – Air Force Times, five days ago. The headline itself, its casual yet confident language – and that it barely raises a collective eyebrow – desperately deserves deconstruction. But in practice, this madness involves the definitionally a-strategic U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) – in conjunction with British and Australian … Continue reading “America’s Still Strangelovian Schemes to ‘Win’ Nuclear Wars”