Maj. Sjursen

Major Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point, as well as the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghan

Latest by Maj. Sjursen in Chronicles

  • Insider Attacks
    Blog
    October 3, 2018

    Insider Attacks

    He was shot in the back, the ultimate act of treachery. On September 3rd, a U.S Army sergeant major was killed by two Afghan police officers—the very people his unit, the new Security Force Assistance Brigade, was there to train.

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  • Blog
    February 23, 2018

    Trump’s National Defense Strategy

    Think of it as the chicken-or-the-egg question for the ages: Do very real threats to the United States inadvertently benefit the military-industrial complex or does the national security state, by its very nature, conjure up inflated threats to feed that defense machine?

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  • Blog
    November 6, 2017

    Congress’s Romance with Cowardice

    In retrospect, Vietnam emerges as just one more chapter in 70 years of ineptitude and apathy on the part of the Senate and House of Representatives when it comes to their constitutionally granted war powers.

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  • Blog
    October 18, 2017

    The Empire Comes Home

    I can remember both so well. 2006: my first raid in South Baghdad. 2014: watching on YouTube as a New York police officer asphyxiated—murdered—Eric Garner for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner not five miles from my old apartment. Both events shocked the conscience.

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  • Blog
    June 29, 2017

    Tread Carefully: The Folly of the Next Afghan “Surge”

    We walked in a single file. Not because it was tactically sound. It wasn’t—at least according to standard infantry doctrine. Patrolling southern Afghanistan in column formation limited maneuverability, made it difficult to mass fire, and exposed us to enfilading machine-gun bursts.

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