Anti-war activist and International Scene lecturer Daniel Sjursen is not just horrified by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on principle – he has lived them.
Sjursen served in the U.S. Army as a strategist for 18 years, where he attained the rank of major, wrote a memoir titled “Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge” and taught history at West Point before his recent retirement.
“On paper, I was the Army’s golden boy. I went to West Point, I was high in my class, I had a slew of glowing evaluations,” Sjursen told members of the Hofstra community gathered in the Cultural Center Theater on Thursday, Sept. 19. “I even have evaluations back when I was a captain that say I’m a future general. They don’t think that anymore.”
Sjursen, who grew up on Staten Island, had just completed basic training when the Twin Towers fell during the 9/11 attacks.
“I wanted revenge,” he admitted. “My biggest fear as 17-year-old Danny was that the war would end before I could get into it. I’m embarrassed of that today.”
In his lecture, Sjursen talked about his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the soldiers he lost to enemy weapons and to suicide; the trauma he and his fellow veterans have to deal with every day; and how he kickstarted his own political education from the middle of the desert by reading Camus and other French existentialist philosophers.
He spoke about his realization that the United States’ occupation of Iraq was what had effectively “shattered” the Middle Eastern country, and how he began writing anti-war articles in 2007 after realizing he could no longer tell families what their loved ones had died fighting for. But what he really wanted to stress were the effects – or lack thereof – that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have on everyday Americans.
“We have to talk about the fact that this is the longest war in American history,” Sjursen said. “A man or a woman born after 9/11 is going to join the military and one of them is going to die in Afghanistan. They’re going to die in a war that started based on a justification that they weren’t even alive for.”
Sjursen offered suggestions as to why the wars are still going on, including the military-industrial complex, which makes a profit as long as wars continue, as well as the idea that foreign influences and lobbyists that control American foreign policy and the corporate mainstream media would rather make money by entertaining the public instead of informing them about the realities of war in the Middle East. But the largest reason he offered to explain why we are still at war was public apathy.
“I used to hate civilians,” Sjursen said. “But then I got empathy, and I realized, well, why are people not really engaged in these wars? Well, it’s because most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. It’s because the vast majority of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank to deal with a health or an automobile crisis. They’re just trying to survive.”
Sjursen also attributed Americans’ increased distance from their military to the current lack of a draft, pointing out that the families of high school seniors and college students during the Vietnam War had no choice but to pay attention to what was going on.
“That’s why they were burning draft cards on college campuses, that’s why they were occupying buildings,” Sjursen said. “Does that happen today? Is anybody taking over buildings to say, ‘End the Afghan war?’”
Those in attendance were inspired by Sjursen’s speech and the way he spoke about striving for peace.
“I can’t remember the last time that I’ve been [that] inspired ... he really spoke to me today,” said Matthew Jagrooph, a sophomore finance major. “It just kind of hit home because I have a lot of military family, and I’m also leaving for the military – the Navy – after college, but just hearing the way that he spoke about [the war], it’s changed my outlook on so many things.”
Sophomore engineering major Omar Aljonubi, who is of both Afghan and Saudi heritage, called the lecture one of the best he had ever heard.
“I’m a Muslim myself and I feel like [Sjursen] is the best example I can think of [of] what the prophet taught, even though he’s probably never even read the Quran.”
Ultimately, Sjursen’s solution for ending wars comes down to grassroots citizen activism. A self-admitted pessimist, he pointed out that none of the three branches of the U.S. government are actively doing anything to end the war.
“We’ve been failed by every institution the Constitution gave us, and so if we care about ending war, then get in the streets,” Sjursen said. “The best way to support veterans is ... [to] create fewer of us. And bring us home.”
