As good a critique of American militarism, as you will find — Major Danny Sjursen's

01 April 2019

There is what we are propagandized to believe . . .

Then, there is what's true.

The two are never the same.

Medically retired US Army major Danny Sjursen yesterday gave us the true version of what is going on with the American military, as well as with the complacently thoughtless society that it operates from.

He begins this way:

I recognize . . .that . . . the Army and the Global War on Terror . . . 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.

The rest of what Sjursen wrote — is evidentiarily tight

In style, like this:

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.

Many more devastatingly astute observations follow that one.

You will not find a more concisely pointed, painfully telling critique of American militarism anywhere.

The moral? — What is sadder than being dismembered — in support of Establishment-manufactured lies?

A desirably operating society would be one in which thoughtfully experienced people encouraged young people to find truth. Instead, entrenched avarice and cowardice in American society do the reverse.

Would that there were thousands more Danny Sjursens.

PeteFree.com

As good a critique of American militarism, as you will find — Major Danny Sjursen's