He entered West Point in July of 2001, two months before the September 11th attacks and served as U.S. Army officer from 2005-2019, with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is contributing editor at Antiwar.com, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP), and his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Huffington Post, The Hill, Salon, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, ScheerPost and TomDispatch, among other publications. He taught American and Civil Rights History at West Point and is the author of two books: Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge (2015), a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War (2020).

He has a BA in history from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and a MA in American and military history from the University of Kansas. In 2019, he was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship. He also co-hosts the podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” along with fellow vet Chris “Henri” Henriksen.