Authored by US Army Major Danny Sjursen (ret.) via TomDispatch.com,
“Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners.” — Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That(1929).
I’m one of the lucky ones. Leaving the madness of Army life with a modest pension and all of my limbs intact feels like a genuine escape. Both the Army and I knew it was time for me to go. I’d tired of carrying water for empire and they’d grown weary of dealing with my dissenting articles and footing the bill for my seemingly never-ending PTSD treatments. Now, I’m society’s problem, unleashed into a civilian world I’ve never gazed upon with adult eyes.
I entered West Point in July 2001, a bygone era of (relative) peace, the moment, you might say, before the 9/11 storm broke. I leave an Army that remains remarkably engaged in global war, patrolling an increasingly militarized world.
In a sense, I snuck out of the military at age 35, my early retirement an ignominious end to a once-promising career. Make no mistake, I wanted out. I’d relocated 11 times in 18 years, often enough to war zones, and I simply didn’t have another deployment in me. Still, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that I’ll mourn the loss of my career, of the identity inherent in soldiering, of the experience of adulation from a grateful (if ill-informed) society.
Perhaps that’s only natural, no matter how much such a hokey admission embarrasses me. I recognize, at least, that there’s a paradox at work here: the Army and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) made me who I now am, brought a new version of me to life, and gifted me (if that’s the right phrase for something so grim) with the stories, the platform, and the pain that now make my writing possible. Those military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in particular turned a budding neocon into an unabashed progressive. My experiences there transformed an insecure, aspiring dealer-in-violence into someone who might be as near as a former military man can get to a pacifist. And what the U.S. Army helped me become is someone who, in the end, I don’t mind gazing at in the mirror each morning.
Should I thank the Army then? Maybe so, no matter the damage that institution did to my psyche and my conscience over the years. It’s hard, though, to thank a war machine that dealt so much death to so many civilians across significant parts of the planet for making me who I am. And no matter how much I told myself I was different, the truth is that I was complicit in so much of that for so long.
In a way, I wonder whether something resembling an apology, rather than a statement of pride in who I’ve become, is the more appropriate way of saying goodbye to all that. Nonetheless, the story is all mine, the burdensome, the beautiful, the banal, and the horrific. War, violence, and bigotry — as I’ve written — are America’s original sins and, looking back, it seems to me that they may be mine as well. In that context, though I’m now officially retired, I think of this as my last piece authored as an active military dissenter — a clearing of the air — before moving on to a life of activism, as well as an unarmed life of words.
What I Won’t Be Missing
It’s time to wave goodbye to a litany of absurdity that I witnessed in the institution to which I dedicated my adult life. Some peers, even friends, may call this heresy — a disgruntled former major airing dirty laundry — and maybe in some way it is. Still, what I observed in various combat units, in conversation with senior officers, and as a horrified voyeur of, and actor in, two dirty wars matters. Of that, I remain convinced.
So here’s my official goodbye to all that, to a military and a nation engaged in an Orwellian set of forever wars and to the professional foot soldiers who made so much of it all possible, while the remainder of the country worked, tweeted, shopped, and slept (in every sense of the word).
Goodbye to the majors who wanted to be colonels and the colonels who wanted to be generals — at any cost. To the sociopaths who rose in the ranks by trampling on the souls of their overburdened troopers, trading lives for minor bumps in statistics and pats on the shoulder from aggressive superiors.
Goodbye to the generals who led like so many lieutenants, the ones who knew the tactics but couldn’t for the life of them think strategically, eternally proving the Peter Principle right with every promotion past their respective levels of incompetence.
So long to the flag officers convinced that what worked at the squad level — physical fitness, esprit de corps, and teamwork — would win victories at the brigade and division level in distant, alien lands.
Farewell to the generals I served under who then shamelessly spun through Washington’s revolving door, trading in their multi-starred uniforms for six- and seven-figure corporate gigs on the boards of weapons manufacturers, aka “the merchants of death” (as they were known once upon a distant time), and so helped feed the unquenchable appetite of the military-industrial beast.
Farewell to the senior generals, so stuck in what they called “their lane” that they were unwilling (or intellectually unable) to advise civilian policymakers about missions that could never be accomplished, so trapped in the GWOT box that they couldn’t say no to a single suggestion from chickenhawk militarists on the Hill or in the Oval Office.
Goodbye to the devotees of American exceptionalism who filled the Army’s ranks, stalwart evangelists of a civic religion that believed there was a secret American inside every Arab or Afghan, ready to burst forth with the slightest poke from Uncle Sam’s benevolent bayonet.
Ciao to staff officers who mistook “measures of performance” (doing lots of stuff) for “measures of effectiveness” (doing the rightstuff). I won’t miss the gaggles of obtuse majors and colonels who demanded measurable “output” — numbers of patrols completed, numbers of houses searched, counts of PowerPoint slides published — from already overtasked captains and the soldiers they led and who will never learn the difference between doing lots and doing well.
Goodbye to battalion and brigade commanders who already had their hands full unsuccessfully “pacifying” entire districts and provinces in alien lands, yet seemed more concerned with the cleanliness of troopers’ uniforms and the two-mile-run times of their units, prioritizing physical fitness over tactical competence, empathy, or ethics.
Godspeed to the often-intolerant conservatism and evangelical Christianity infusing the ranks.
See ya to the generals who lent their voices, while still in uniform, to religious organizations, one of whom even became the superintendent of West Point, and at worst got mere slaps on the wrist for that. (And while we’re at it, here’s a goodbye wave to all those chaplains, supposedly non-denominational supporters of every kind of soldier, who regularly ended their prayers with “in Jesus’s name, amen.” So much for church-state separation.)
Farewell to the still-prevalent cis-gender patriarchy and (strangely erotic) homophobia that infuses the ranks of the U.S. military. Sure, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a thing of the past, but the Army remains a (straight) boys’ club and no easy place for the openly gay, while the president remains intent on banningtransgender enlistees. And even in 2019, one in four women still reports at least one sexual assault during her military tour of duty. How’s that for social progress?
So long to the adrenaline junkies and power-obsessed freaks atop so many combat units, folks who lived for the violence, the rush of nighttime raids without a thought for their often counterproductive and bloody consequences. It’s a relief to leave them behind as they continue — prisoners of counterinsurgency, or COIN, math — to feed the insurgencies the U.S. fights far faster than they kill “terrorists.”
Goodbye to officers, especially generals, who place “duty” above ethics.
Sayonara to those who canonize “martyrs” like former commander James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a hero for resigning as defense secretary rather than implement (gasp!) modest troop withdrawals from our endless wars in Syria and Afghanistan. (As for a Pentagon-backed war in Yemen that starved to death at least 85,000 kids, he was apparently fine with that.)
Toodle-oo to the vacuous, “thanks-for-your-service” compliments from civilians who otherwise ignore soldiers’ issues, foreign policy, and our forever wars, who never give a thought to placing the country’s disastrous conflicts up there with healthcare on anyone’s election-year priorities list.
Parting is such sweet sorrow when it comes to the neo-Confederate backgrounds and cheerleading of far too many troopers and officers, to a military academy that still has a Robert E. Lee Road on which you drive from a Lee Housing Area to a Lee Barracks, part of an Army that has named at least 10 of its stateside bases after Confederate generals.
Farewell to rampant Islamophobia in the ranks and the leaders who do so little to counter it, to the ubiquitous slurs about Arabs and Afghans, including “hajis,” “rag-heads,” “camel jockies,” or simply “sand niggers.” What a way to win Muslim “hearts and minds!”
Ta-ta to the paradox of hyper-capitalism and Ayn Randian fiscal conservatism among the officers of the nation’s most socialist institution, the military. Count me in as sick of the faux intellectuals reading books by economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in Iraq or their less sophisticated peers toting around Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck volumes, all the while enjoying their publicly-financed, co-pay-less government healthcare.
Adieu to a military justice system that boots out soldiers who commit “alcohol-related” offenses or “piss hot” for marijuana while rarely investigating the Army’s role as a catalyst for their addictions — and so long as well to a discipline-over-treatment model for dealing with substance abuse that’s only now beginning to change.
Goodbye to infighting among the Army, Navy, and Air Force over funds and equipment and to those “Pentagon Wars” that prioritize loyalty to your service branch over fealty to the nation or the Constitution.
See you later, when it comes to the predictable opinions of a legion of semi-retired generals on 24-hour cable news who count on their public stature to sell Americans yet more guns and militarism.
So long to the faux-intellectualism of men like former “surge” general David Petraeus and his sycophantic army of “warrior monks” and COINdinistaswho have never seen a problem to which slightly improved counterinsurgency tactics wasn’t the answer and are incapable of questioning the efficacy of force, intervention, and occupation as ways to alter complex societies for the better.
Farewell to the pride and value military leaders place on superficial decorations — patches and badges and medals — rather than true mission-accomplished moments. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for even a single senior commander to ever admit that his forces wasted their time, or worse, during their year-long deployment in one of America’s distant war zones.)
Cheerio to the prevailing consensus among U.S. officers that our NATO allies are “worthless” or “weak” because they aren’t aggressive enough in taking on certain missions or types of patrols, while fighting and sometimes dying for Uncle Sam’s global priorities. (This is the nonsense that led to French fries being banned and “freedom fries” served in the congressional cafeteria after France had the gall to oppose Washington’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.)
Goodbye to the colonels and generals who speak at the funeral ceremonies of soldiers they hardly know in order to “rededicate” the mourning survivors to the never-ending mission at hand.
Farewell to the soldiers and officers who regularly complained that the Army’s Rules of Engagement were too strict — as if more brutality, bombing, and firepower (with less concern for civilians) would have brought victory — as well as to the assumption behind such complaints that Americans have some sort of inherent right to wage wars of choice overseas.
So long to the chauvinism in the senior ranks that asserts some sort of messianic American right and mission to police the globe, dot it with bases, and give its military men license to strut around the villages and alleyways of sovereign states as if they were their own.
America’s servicemen have taken to believing in their own myth: that they really do constitute a special caste above all you measly civilians — and now, of course, me, too. In this way, military men actually reflect a toxic society’s values. Few ask why there aren’t teachers, nurses, and social workers honoredlike U.S. military personnel in America’s vaunted sports stadiums. True servants — as we soldiers, in my years of service, were so fond of dubbing ourselves — should stick to humility and recognize that there are other, far nobler ways to spend one’s life.
And here, finally, is what I can’t say goodbye to: a society that’s come to value its warriors above all others.
A Farewell Coda
So what should this now-retired Army major make of it all? The inconvenient truth is perhaps very little. It’s unlikely that anything I’ll write will change many minds or affect policy in any way. In the decade following World War I, when Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine of his time, took up the pen to expose the ills of American-style corporate warfare, he (unlike me) made a true splash. As today, however, the American intervention machine just rolled on. So what chance does a former Army major have of moving the needle on U.S. militarism?
I’m active now in what little there is of an antiwar movement in this country. That was part of the genius of President Richard Nixon’s cynical decision in 1973, following years of large-scale antiwar activity in this country and in the U.S. military itself during the Vietnam era, to end the draft. He replaced a citizen’s army with an all-volunteer force. By turning the military into a professional caste, a kind of homegrown foreign legion, rather than a responsibility of every citizen, by transforming its officers into an isolated, fawned-upon caste, he effectively ensured that the public would look elsewhere and that antiwar movements would largely become things of the past.
Maybe it’s hopeless to fight such a beast. Still, as the child of a blue-collar, outer-borough New York City family, I was raised on the romance of lost causes. So I hope to play a small role in my version of a lost cause — as a (lonely) response to the pervasive stereotypes of modern American soldiers, of the officer corps, of West Point. I plan on being there whenever the militarists insist that Army types are all politically conservative, all model patriots, all devout “moral” Christians, all… you name it and I’ll be there as an inconvenient counterpoint to a system that demands compliance.
And here’s the truth of it: no matter what you may think, I’m not alone. There are a precious few other public voices from the forever wars speaking out and — as various supportive texts and emails to me have made clear — more silent dissenters in the ranks than you might imagine.
So count on this: I’ll be hoping that more serving officers as well as troops gather the courage to speak out and tell the American public the score when it comes to our brutal, hopeless, never-ending wars. Sure, it’s just a dream for now, but what would those at the top of that war system do if the troops, officers, and commanders they’ve so consciously placed on a pedestal begin doubting, then questioning, then dissenting? That would be a problem for a war machine that, even in the age of AI and drones, still needs its obedient foot soldiers to hump a ruck and patrol a block.
I was, until recently, one of them, the obsequious grunt at the pointy end of the spear fashioned by a warlike government ruling over an apathetic citizenry. But no longer. I’m only 35 and maybe it won’t make a difference, but I must admit that I’m looking forward to my second act. So think of this goodbye to all that as a hello to all that as well.
* * *
Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris ‘Henri’ Henriksen.
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“Soldiers are Just Dumb, Stupid Animals to be used as pawns of foreign policy” ~ Henry Kissenger
There was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”
And then there was the CIA’s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. As Time reports, “before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public, those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.”
As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.
The real psyop comes when your government tells you that enlisted U.S. military soldiers are fighting for your freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not a single foreign country has threatened to scrap your constitutional rights. Your own government is the one destroying the constitution in which your “freedoms” are enshrined.
So with that in mind we should review the oath of military enlistment;
The Oath of Enlistment:
“I, ______________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
So the constitution is what soldiers are supposed to be defending and protecting. So we have “defend the ‘constitution’ against all enemies foreign and ‘domestic’ “. So by this definition, your Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Army should be attacking the U.S. government (your own government), not Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, or even North Korea. The only ones threatening your freedom is your own government.
http://www.beyondtreason.com/
Brokedicknation,
Nice add-on.
The Kissinger “quote” is not a quote. There is zero first hand attribution that he ever said that. Maybe he did, maybe he did not. Haig, the person he supposedly said it too, supposedly in a heated argument, never said he said it, at least not formally.
These distinctions are important. It is important to understand when something is not a provable fact, and that “quote” is not in fact a quote, and is at best an unqualified attribution via second, third or lord knows how many hands.
There are facts indeed with respect to the comment as a whole (mustard has, MK Ultra, employment of the Nazis). That said, they are put together without context and detail. The why, when, where is left out, so as to support a narrative. As snippets, they look far worse than if understood in context of why, when and where.
I am always suspicious of “facts” that leave off details in order to create a narrative. I prefer the entire story, to draw my own conclusions. But that is just me.
For what it’s worth:
His book, “Ghost Riders of Baghdad”:
https://www.upne.com/1611687811.html
Cover image
He waited just long enough to get his pension, cuz that’s more important than his pacifism.
He sound like he’s launching some sort of bleeding heart liberal campaign platform for some political office, cause, that is the only way to change the system, is to become part of it.
I hope he does not enter politics, he does not have enough evil in him to survive.
I do believe McCain’s seat is coming up in 2020, isn’t it?
The more things change the more they remain the same, he could have left after his first commission time frame. Where as, he is now a progressive has me scratching my head, the globalists need ever more of his type. Human nature never changes, tyrants do what tyrants do, societies always sacrifice the young. Who will be in charge of this NWO, the UN Secretary General with Soros pulling his strings. Will sacrifices have to be made to meet all the UN’s social justice mandates? Who will be the sacrificed? It won’t be “people of color” or the “religion of peace”. I feel for the Major, and that’s about it, I wish we could “all get along” in this wonderful world we live in. I won’t be holding my breath!
The man is a VICTIM, give him the respect he DESERVES. Just $19.99 gives men like Danny Sjursen the care he needs knowing that he carries the mental anguish of collecting that mercenary check without ever actually getting hurt. Millions of bullets fired, thousands of bombs dropped, so some taliban wouldn’t take out the corner 7-11.
He cries at the first of every month when that check from an ungrateful American taxpayer shows up in his mailbox.
Future is looking bright.
The military will likely soon be used on citizens on a big scale.
Veterans not killed or maimed by the VA will be the backbone of a resistance. Just guessing as most likely to happen.
We can only hope enough of them wake and see who the real enemy is. The Globalists think the the Military people are too dumb and easily controlled.
Great sentiment. Wonderfully expressed. Welcome to the ranks of decent people Major.
Now you can fight the real enemy.
Stay in the “service” long enough and most will see it as a stinking pile of BS. It has far too many spineless losers who through time alone are elevated in rank. Follow orders, act like you actually believe all the BS going on around you and retire with that pension-the ultimate reward. Receive adulation from civilians who actually believe we are making a positive change in the world and protecting our freedom at home. Never mind it is more a huge social welfare system than an actual fighting force.
We foolishly spend astronomical amounts of money to keep the parasites in and around the MIC fed. Money we can ill afford.
We should merge all the services into one and cut its size by 3/4. That’s all we need for true defense. That of course will never happen. There is just too much slop for the piggies. It all makes me want to barf.
I’m too saddened by the needless destruction of so many innocent lives and property to feel proud of my service.
“Farewell to the still-prevalent cis-gender patriarchy and (strangely erotic) homophobia that infuses the ranks of the U.S. military. Sure, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a thing of the past, but the Army remains a (straight) boys’ club and no easy place for the openly gay, while the president remains intent on banning transgender enlistees.”
I know. I stopped reading after that one. He points out many of the real problems with the military then went completely off the rails.
Lawrence, Kansas is the perfect place for him. They will love him there.
Yeah, he sounds at times more like a Demo-Commie than an old school liberal. If he wouldn’t have added a bunch of non-sense non-issues and some anti-christian bias his rant would have resonated more. But seriously, he thinks a small number of folks using racial/religious slurs is something that is stopping winning “hearts and minds” of muslims over there? He is crazy. Does he not know about the Muslims murdering gays in nearly all Muslim countries, the genocides, wiping out Christians, Budhists etc etc? The radical Muslims are seeking to expand and destroy and wipe out other cultures and faiths, and many of the less Radical ones either do nothing or tacitly support this, although perhaps they do it more so via birth rates, and intimidation. So this guy has got some serious dellusions.
This is why Ron Paul started to get on my nerves. Sure US has caused Blowback, no doubt. But he wants to attribute everything to blowback. Muslim gov’t and militant groups have been doing a lot of endless murdering, without the US being involved. Calling them names is meaningless. And SJW bullshit isn’t going to magically make things better either. Sounds like he is just a anti-war version of a Demo-Commie at this point and he doesn’t look at the history of the ME or how Islam is seeking to literally take over the world if its allowed to. The story is far more complicated than the bad US and others wanting oil.
After reading it, I conclude the Major is an asshole.
Is that still there?
I opted for the back roads through some really interesting places.
Well, interesting for the prairie of Kansas, which really does look like where you might want to be standing if you want to be considered “lost on the prairie.”
“Is that still there?”
What? Lawrence?
It’s where the University of Kansas is located. It is an SJW paradise. It’s rather expensive to live there, for a college town in Middle America.
Holy shyte, little did I realize how far left things have gone in both Lawrence and Ks in general.
https://www.roadsnacks.net/most-liberal-cities-in-kansas/
https://www.silive.com/news/2017/05/disturbing_deep-rooted_pattern.html
He’s a hardcore SJW. Boilerplate agitprop on every leftist talking point.
And maybe things have changed a lot since I was in the military, but with 18 years and a West Point pedigree, who’d he piss off? He should be an LTC minimum. Full Bird if he kept his nose clean, especially with multiple combat tours.
Something doesn’t add up with this guy. I smell a candidate being primed for office.
You are probably right, but if what I think I know is true, there has been some real struggle between different “factions” within the military hierarchy.
I’ve tried to differentiate between what I think I know versus what I know. Someone I know who was in position to know but is now either going galt or going boeing depending upon salary offer says the struggle is always the same: Whose is bigger?
The problem is that women have them now too.
I’m not trying to suggest I talked to any old military friends while out and about but I might have.
You are right Farmer. His rank doesn’t add up. Stealth candidate in the closet?
Oh, Danny boy, the poofs, the cranks are calling
From trail to trail, and down the mountain side.
The tours they’re gone, and all the phallus swinging,
It’s you, it’s you, must go and I abide.
He showed up to USMA in 2001…so he didn’t become an officer until 2005, so only 13 years in. Major is right, and probably a young major at that.
I am sympathetic to a lot of his points, fairly similar to my own evolution about my time ‘in service’ but he does sound like a tool bag. A (closeted?) gay, islamic-convert, commie tool bag.
For the record, if he graduated from West Point, he should be smart enough to figure out you can’t advocate for enough gov’t force to believe in prog/commie and be a pacifist. You can be quite isolationist (we have no business over there), but to say you wouldn’t kill a guy raping your wife because you don’t believe in violence is a whole-other level of stupid for someone advocating for a police state with death camps…even if you’re lying to yourself that is what progressive is progressing to.
Entered WP in 2001. So only 14 years in service as an officer. Hard to make colonel in that period, especially since he is an asshole.
Nope, he went to Quibbler U., the real name for USMA, which is what the rest of us joes call it., till 2005. Then commissioned in 2005, maybe on medical hold starting in 2018, and out in early 2019 so 13 or so years of actual commissioned service. But with a medical retirement, which is what it sounds like he got due to PTSD and whatever else injuries he got, he can draw an early retirement and a disability check. For the rest of his life. And he’s only 35, so if he lives to the average age of death, 78, the taxpayers are on the hook for paying him for the next 43 years. For doing nothing. Don’t forget, we also will be praying ALL HIS MEDICAL BILLS TOO. Until he’s dead. So, he got a free college degree, that was valued at $250,000, and had to work for 13 years, and now he’s riding the gravy train to easy streets til he takes a dirt nap. And we are all paying for it now, then…and will be for the next 40 or 50 years. And I’m from Kansas, and Lawrence is like Austin or San Francisco in the mid west.
I’ve only just started this but had to come here to say Semper Fi. I will finish reading it later and try to respond. I scanned the article and am amazed at your vicissitude and your willingness to discuss it so frankly.
You have my attention.
Godspeed to you Major. I agree with some of what you have to say on our idiotic policies and war strategies. But you sound like the kind of self-righteous prog that no Soldier or Marine wants to be near. I wasn’t chauvinistic or an “Islamophobe” until my service in the Middle East rubbed it all in my face. I saw women who could not perform their duties get away with things I would have been court-martialed for.
I also saw how Muslims live and treat each other – and wanted nothing to do with them – and certainly don’t want them brought here.
I also observed Marines in bad situations who made it through with a lot of help from their Christian faith that you seem to despise.
I have to assume your Progressive religion has blinded you to all this. I bet everyone in you last unit is relieved they no longer have to deal with your crap.
I’d thank him for his service but apparently someone saying thank you is inappropriate to him. I couldn’t take much more whining after half way but I hope his letter was cathartic.
This reads more like a letter from a crazy ex-girlfriend saying all the bad stuff in the relationship was my fault. Except in this case she stayed in long enough to get all the gifts.
I support some (most?) of the things he brings up. But after 2 decades in corporate America, I and most, could write a similar letter about our day-to-day existences.
As one of my coworkers says regularly, “We are all whores”
“Toodle-oo to the vacuous, “thanks-for-your-service” compliments from civilians who otherwise ignore soldiers’ issues” I understand the Major’s feelings about this. Really I do. Of course when I and my brothers came back we were called baby killers. So a small improvement due to the propaganda foisted upon the masses. I was opposed to us going in to the sandboxs. And the damage done to two generations of Americans from these dirty wars will haunt us for decades.
The major was a willing servant of our ruthless empire? the results now make him uncomfortable and the answer is Commie authoritarian claptrap? He has learned nothing and is just another leftist arsehole.
Despite some VERY valid observations, to me this guy’s just carving out his niche as a 21st century John Kerry. Fuck him. Progressive? Fuck him 2 times.
Meanwhile the our most existential threat to our culture and freedom are the self-serving politicians in D.C. They are whittling (actually gouging) away at our inherent rights and freedoms faster than ANY of the so called ‘enemies’. They are using Islam and self-victimization minded people as a tool to destroy America.
The plan to invade the M.E was a multi-faceted plan that has made money for the Industrial Military Complex. Destroyed our troops lives because of the PTSD. The suicides and mental toll likely came from them realizing they had been used as pawns in the whole endless “war on terror”.
The Globalists created ‘refugees’ with which they could collapse western society and theoretically ‘control it’ thereafter; quite the nefarious scheme in my opinion.
I agree with many things said here, however, making the military a social engineering experiment laboratory is not one of them.
It is true that a frustrated career can make quite the cynic out of even the most patriotic, gung-ho troop or officer. It is also clear Maj. Sjursen didn’t have a great career. As HSF points out something doesn’t add up for a “ring knocker” not to make O-5 at minimum. Probably pissed off his brigade commander one too many times.
But at least he figured out, after a full 20, that it was not personal, just business. Really BIG business.
Danny Sjursen, Major, U.S. Army (Ret.) should submit his bitter “hail and farewell” to The Army Times. See if they will run it up the flagpole and how many salute (or take a knee).
after 2.5 years in vietnam i learned this i don’t believe in very much never trust a person in gov’t and the army so full of what knowing what not to do if i hear it one more time i do think i shall go nuts IT’S NOT YOUR PLACE TO THINK IT’S JUST DO OR DIE
This boy is just hoping to be another famous traitor like John Kerry. I would not want my family member serving under this malcontent. Nor would I want him being their Boy Scout leader, coach, Sunday school teacher or school teacher. God forbid my daughter or granddaughter would even date let alone marry such a libtard fool. It was difficult to even put up with reading such trash but I did to the end hoping he would say something that would redeem him for all his other words of disdain for his country and fellow service members but it never happened. Pity the parents who produced such a crybaby sissy. They must be trying to figure out a way to disassociate themselves from him.
The truth about the military was made crystal clear by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler in the 1930s in his “War is a Racket.” If it wasn’t clear to all from that, Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, Panama, Grenada, and countless others PRIOR TO 9-11 should have cleared it all up. No excuses for the ignorance or his willful support of the criminal US government and its military in their adventurism.
I don’t blame him for getting a pension. I do blame him for being an idiot. Glad to see my initial observation while in the Army that almost all officers are douchebags is still proving itself.
I did not see his branch in the US Army?
The “murdering innocents 10,000 miles from home for Uncle Sam’s big business friends” branch.
I stopped reading at “modest pension”. 14 years service after West Point, which was free, and he grts a pension for life from taxpayers. You cannot make this shit up.
We are doomed.
He reads like one of the numerous douche canoes that made me leave the service. Reads more like he missed the light colonel list…yet again. The few points that carried any argument were nullified by the incessant whining about warrior culture. I would have figured a supposed academy educator would have formed a better series of arguments, but he was a fucking ring knocker. Faux self righteous cunt.
A long time ago a bunch of my soldiers, peers and myself came up with the 400 reasons to ETS/ not enlist. Now that was how you pissed and moaned while entertaining. One of these days I may post it for shits and grins.
He could have just said the usual military mantra: never let progress get in the way of tradition.
When you take out all the 21st century bullsh*t this letter could have been written in 1968. Close your eyes and just think for a minute about what was going on in late 1968 and 1969. Think of the tactics and strategies in use then versus the desert tactics now.
The Army is a cyclic organization which reinvents itself every 30 to 50 years. A strong cohort that were junior officers in Vietnam decided in the late 70’s it was time for a major change and they had the rank and position to do it. That phase terminated with the victory parade after the first gulf war.
Battlefield metrics were never a good way to measure progress and they never will be. It is time for another major change. This time we start with the Pentagon and shake out as many civilians as possible along with all the race, culture, gender and environmental bullsh*t……
He’s definitely not destined to greatness fighting to drag US down the Social Liberal path of insanity & destruction; that’s partial to his mental problems. Maj Barf is not worthy to dust off Lee’s or Butler’s boots; go smear your initials on Lincoln’s Memorial with pink lipstick you major fool.
The next John McCain?
Boohoo for you. I’m more concerned about what our military monster is doing to the USA. I read and remembered at a young age, that warning about the military/industrial complex.
I always figured don’t ask don’t tell was a good idea. I don’t want to hear about anyone’s deviant sexual thinking.
Wasn’t it the drill sergeant on Gomer Pyle who used to mutter: “That’s one sick puppy”?
Sorry, but fuck this guy. I’ve seen all these Army Major stories. He’s got a platform and he is preaching his belief’s. So be it. We should be out of all these foreign countries and minding our own business in my view. But this guy is not the one without a political motive.