Patriotic Dissent

Drawing on a tradition of dissent and service, combat veteran Danny Sjursen calls for a new approach to American military policy

Story by Will Haynes / Photography by Jason Dailey

There was a time, not so long ago,” Danny Sjursen remembers, “when I didn’t expect to make it to thirty.” But having survived many national and personal traumas, this combat veteran and Lawrence resident marks his 37th year with the release of his new book, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. A heartfelt work of history and conscience, the book traces our nation’s long tradition of peace activism, draws on Sjursen’s own military experience and challenges Americans to question our motives before we launch more attacks or send more young women and men to occupy other lands.

Sjursen traveled a remarkable path to dissent. Hailing from a Staten Island family that he jokingly calls part of “a dying breed—the urban white trash,” he attended West Point and emerged as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. In 2006, the young officer led a 19-man platoon into war-torn Iraq. Sjursen and his men became part of the much-touted surge of troops meant to quell the insurgent and sectarian violence that had been set in motion by America’s original invasion. Instead, they found only death and despair; the soldiers under his command suffered two killed and eight wounded. Two of them committed suicide. Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqis—combatants and civilians alike—died all around them.

“The horror, the futility, the farce of the war in Iraq was the turning point of my life,” Sjursen writes. Confronting the sectarian violence claiming so many innocent lives (most independent sources place the numbers at over 200,000 deaths since the U.S. invasion), he remembers thinking: “Did we cause this? Yes. And what can I do about it? Nothing.” But Sjursen would go on to do much. An insatiable reader, he devoted his off-duty hours to works of history and political activism. A deployment to Afghanistan several years later—where more of his soldiers died in yet another hapless conflict—completed Sjursen’s transition into a rarity: an officer who vocally opposed his country’s militaristic foreign policy. Haunted by memories of the friends he’d lost but determined to carry on, Sjursen came to Lawrence in 2012 as a graduate student in the University of Kansas history department. He then returned to West Point as a professor in his own right and published his first book, an exposé on the effectiveness of the U.S. military occupations that drew on his own experience, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians and the Myth of the Surge. In early 2019, Sjursen retired from the army and began a fulltime career as a Lawrence-based author and speaker, taking on what he describes as “chickenhawk America”—those who advocate for military action without exposing themselves to the risks and moral quandaries associated with it.

Sjursen lists his heroes as Robert F. Kennedy and Smedley Butler, the decorated U.S. Marine general who improbably became an anti-interventionist after World War I and spoke out against far-right political trends in the 1930s. Sjursen’s new book places people like Butler in a tradition of American leaders who fought against unnecessary military actions, but Sjursen describes the life and political position of a modern dissident veteran as “lonely.”

It’s easy to see why. In contrast to the numerous Vietnam vets and organizations who have worked for peace, Sjursen knows virtually all the active antiwar veterans of his own generation and can count them on his fingers. He is responsible for uniting and motivating much of that community with his podcast, Fortress on a Hill, and his numerous articles in national platforms such as the Nation, American Conservative, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Salon.com, Harper’s Magazine and more.

Sjursen remains a tireless advocate for change, both nationally and locally. Most of his time is devoted to writing, speaking, and traveling in support of antiwar and other protest organizations. For the past two years, Sjursen has written an average of eleven articles a month and spent countless hours marching in support of Free Palestine and Black Lives Matter. In May 2020, he joined a handful of veterans who infiltrated President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, where the group stripped to reveal T-shirts with progressive slogans and earned the crowd’s ire. He also has physically supported Black Lives Matter and racial justice activists at gatherings and protests in Lawrence and Kansas City.

I first met Sjursen eight years ago. At that time, we were both graduate students at KU and both military veterans. The publication of Patriotic Dissent and its urgent call for Americans to close down “endless war” enabled me to reconnect with Sjursen. Over numerous Vienna lagers at Lawrence Beer Company, we discussed his new book and what it means to be a veteran and dissenter in modern America.

Will Haynes (WH): You pack a lot into the 140 pages of Patriotic Dissent. At one point, you delineate three types of patriotism that you think nearly all Americans fall into: They’re either “pageant patriots, passive patriots, or participatory principled patriots.” What really surprised me is that you characterize the “passive patriots” as the most dangerous. Why is that?

Danny Sjursen (DS): I think sometimes the veneer of being principled or caring can almost be worse than the enemy, the person who’s against you. Post 9/11 is this pageant patriotism, this surface-level “support the troops.” Patriotism is the yellow ribbon, it’s the 50-yard-line [tributes to soldiers], it’s the flyovers that the Pentagon pays for. And I think that the pageantry patriotism is a responsibility- and obligation-less approach. That’s a big percentage of Americans. The polite liberals—mostly white—of America are the passive patriots. They’ll critique at the margins. They’ll say the war in Iraq was wrong. But there’s no systemic critique. They’re still not willing to touch the sacred cows: America as a force for good in the world, American exceptionalism in general, the concept that America has to be forward deployed in an expeditionary manner like no other country in history. You can’t question that. And I have a big problem with that. And then that last part I talk about is participatory principled patriotism. It’s rare, but what I try to show in the book is that it’s always been there. And in a time when your (ostensible) republic is on the verge of going full-throated empire, anything besides patriotic dissent is, frankly, obscene.

WH: I thought it was interesting how you made this a work of history. And you say that, contrary to what many have claimed, “anti-imperialism is as American as apple pie.” What do you mean by that?

DS: I don’t think that anti-imperialism and antiwar dissent have been the mainstream, but the United States, for all its flaws, did found itself in opposition to an empire. There has always been a substratum of anti-imperialism in the American psyche. At every stage of our imperial folly, there were important figures who opposed it. That includes Mark Twain. That includes even military folks. How many Americans know that Ulysses S. Grant said that the Mexican-American War was the most wicked war ever and that the greatest regret in his life was that he didn’t have the courage to resign over it? Why does every American not know that? If we’re gonna say being antiwar or anti-imperialist is un-American, then we’ve got to write off a lot of our heroes, including Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower.

WH: Near the end of your book, you say that dissent is “rare” and “must rise from the people, from the grassroots.” What can people, particularly civilians, do to oppose mindless patriotism and forever wars?

DS: I don’t think the military can lead this movement, or the veteran community. I’m literally still at a loss as to how we get the civilian population motivated. I think that if the Black Lives Matter [and] police brutality protests that I’ve been a big part of—in my white-male, non-leader way—have some benefit, it’s that the American people might start to see, through police militarization, that there is a direct connection between empire abroad and empire at home.

WH: In the book, you mention the pathetic response to an anti-Iran-war rally back in January [2020]. You humorously called KU students out for their low turnout and not paying attention. And you tie it in with the town’s history as a progressive place. What about Lawrence do you enjoy, but also, what about it has disappointed you?

DS: I love Lawrence. I’m proud of John Brown. I’m proud of our history. People who live in Lawrence have a sense that there’s something special about Lawrence. It makes me happy. The young generation is inspiring in a million ways. This may not even be a critique of them personally, but the fact that there isn’t a draft, the fact that there is a sense that “foreign policy doesn’t affect me unless I choose for it to,” I think really has diminished the activism and emphasis among college students. There’s two ways to look at it. Either there’s something wrong with this generation—I reject that, actually—or the system has been massaged in such a way that it has obviated the sense that foreign policy matters to all of us. And I don’t necessarily want the draft to come back, but I do want that [Vietnam era] urgency to come back.

WH: You explain that most vets like yourself want something different from the obligatory thanks that the public is expected to give, and that there’s a way people can “genuinely support” veterans. So how can we?

DS: To me, it seems that if we really want to support veterans, create less of us. That’s my antiwar posture. But even if we leave that aside, read the newspaper every day and follow what we’re doing. We live in a world today where it is completely easy to say, “I support the troops,” and have no idea what the troops are doing. That’s grotesque to me. My point is: if you really want to support veterans, know what the hell you’re asking them to do, because the thing is, it’s all done in your name.

(This interview has been edited for length.)

Will Haynes served in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army. He earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Kansas, has written for the New York Times and Truman Library Institute, and currently works as the director of engagement and learning at the Watkins Museum of History.