Daniel A. Sjursen - Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War

Copyright 2020 by Daniel A. Sjursen

All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Heyday.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sjursen, Daniel A., author.
Title: Patriotic dissent : America in the age of endless war / Daniel A.
Sjursen.
Other titles: America in the age of endless war
Description: Berkeley, California : Heyday, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020017750 (print) | LCCN 2020017751 (ebook) | ISBN
9781597145145 (cloth) | ISBN 9781597145220 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sjursen, Daniel A. | War--Moral and ethical aspects--United
States. | Military ethics--United States. | Dissenters--United States. |
United States--Military policy. | United States--Armed
Forces--Officers--Political activity. | United States--Armed
Forces--Political activity. | Patriotism--United States.
Classification: LCC UA22 .S58 2020 (print) | LCC UA22 (ebook) | DDC
172/.420973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017750
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017751

Cover Design: Ashley Ingram
Interior Design/Typesetting: Ashley Ingram

Published by Heyday
P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, California 94709
(510) 549-3564
heydaybooks.com

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N ovember 2006. Just south of Baghdad, Iraq.

It took me exactly one patrol to turn against the war in Iraq. To be more specific, it all unfolded on the first independent mission I led as a scout platoon leader assigned to the Third Squadron, Sixty-First Cavalry Regiment, of the storied Second Infantry Division. My beloved second platoon rolled out the gate of Camp Rustamiyah in southeast Baghdad that day in a single file of four HMMWV gun trucks on a basic presence patrol: a vague, if ubiquitous, attempt to show the flag and exude a sense of security in a country then wracked by devastating sectarian civil war. There were nineteen of us in those inadequately armored vehicles. My seasoned veteran platoon sergeant was thirty-six years of age, the daddy of the platoon; none of the other troopers were older than twenty-eight. The average age was about twenty. I commanded, though I was all of twenty-three.

We turned right out of the gate and headed south, crossed the Diyala River, and proceeded along the aptly code-named Route Wild. Matters deteriorated rather quickly. Halfway to the first of the populated villagesoften labeled suburbs of Baghdad, though they bore little resemblance to the ones in New Yorks Westchester County that I envied from afar as a child in Staten Islanda small improvised explosive device (IED) prematurely exploded just meters in front of our lead vehicle. The insurgent triggerman had mistimed the detonation before fleeing. As always, we never saw or found him. Just as wed been trained to do in the scrublands of Colorado and deserts of California, we halted, set a security cordon, and exploited the blast site: we took pictures of the crater, traced the command (detonation) wire, and checked the vehicles for damage. The whole affair lasted maybe fifteen minutes and was both terrifying and exhilarating. Idwedseen combat; we were warriors now! Oh, the stories wed be able to tell in garrison town taverns when the deployment was over.

All of this and more crossed my mind. Still, I was an officer and had to think practically, too. There were so many questions: Who planted the bomb? Which sect, militia, or insurgent group did he belong to? Where did he run off to? Where did he or they store the bombs? How did the civilians know to avoid the (conspicuously empty) area? Were such attacks to be a regular feature of daily patrols? What if the blast hadnt missed? For most of these I had no answers, and neither the superior officers nor the leaders of the unit wed replaced seemed to have any useful advice. What was certain was that someone, or some part of the Iraqi populace, hated usenough to kill us. Even for a West Pointtrained professional soldier, this was a profound and disturbing realization. Shit was about to get real.

So on we rolled southward towards the historic, ancient city of Salman Pak, once the capital of the ancient Seleucid (Greek) and Sassanid (Persian) empires. About a mile out I heard the distinct sound of gunshots in the distance, several pops in successionpistol fire. Picking up the radio hand mic, I ordered the lead vehicle, immediately to my front, to pick up the pace and, in classic Indian Wars cavalry fashion, race to the sound of the guns. What we found was a macabre reminder that the US Army occupied a nation locked in a brutal civil war. Two Iraqi teens were sprawled on the pavement. Ones brains were leaking out; the other had a couple of holes in his upper chest. Somehow, both were still breathing. I yelled for my medic, and Doc, as we called him, rushed forward. Before Doc could get to the teen with the head woundand because my own inexperience precluded my gaining control of the site and situationthe gathering crowd of locals tossed him into a makeshift ambulance, which proceeded to pull away without the other wounded kid. Wed later learn he died within minutes.

Our medic kneeled beside me over the teen with the chest wounds, but before he could render aid, Doc vomited and began to shake uncontrollably. In the many months that followed hed prove a steady, competent medic and treat many of our own often seriously wounded troopers, but this was his first real-life victim. Almost immediately, another soldier, whod been considered a screwup back at home station but also once worked as an EMT, stepped up and began treatment. It wouldnt be the last time this soon-to-be-decorated trooper saved the day with his medical know-how. Once the field dressing was applied, a few of my other guys loaded the quickly fading teen into the back of my HMMWV. Everyone mounted up, and we pulled a U-turn and sped back north.

I hadnt clearly thought through the next step, running as I was on instinct and adrenaline. I knew kids who toted pistols back home in my neighborhood of Staten Island, but for the most part these served as props for play gangsters. Id never seen someone shot before, but I knew viscerally that the bloody mess in my backseat looked bad. Wounded local nationalslifeless army code for Iraqi civilianswerent technically supposed to be brought to or treated at US military base aid stations. But Id studied the maps and I knew there werent any operational civilian hospitals in the area, and none was closer than our forward operating base (FOB). And this kid wasnt going to make it without higher-level treatmentand fast.

So I made a few frantic radio calls to headquarters requesting an exception so I could drive the casualty through the gate and to the unit aid station. I received a series of denials, then equivocations, and finally silence. To hell with it, I thoughtwere coming in! By now the gravely wounded teen was audibly wheezing. It was just about the most awful sound Id ever heard. Past the gate we wound and screeched down the dusty base roads to the aid station, a rear-echelon sergeantwe pejoratively called such noncombat soldiers FOBBITS for being ensconced in the safety of forward operating bases, and in reference to the