Articles / OpEds

Dan O'Shea recounts helping an Afghan-American named Asad get his extended family out of Kabul, and argues that the promise to leave no one behind was honored by veterans long after the last C-17 left.

Dan O'Shea on going on the offensive against Iraq's kidnapping rings

Writing after the burning of a captive Jordanian pilot, Dan O'Shea explains why groups from Boko Haram to ISIS turn hostages into propaganda — and what the al-Qaida kidnapping crisis in Iraq revealed about how the messaging war is actually won.

In this Tampa Tribune op-ed, Dan O'Shea argues that refusing to name the religious ideology motivating the Islamic State and al-Qaida makes them impossible to defeat — drawing on Sun Tzu and his own years in Baghdad and Kabul.

A newspaper account of Dan O'Shea's Navy League presentation on the kidnapping crisis in Iraq — the economics driving it, why journalists became prized targets, and how foreign abductions fell from 40 a month to one during his tenure.

Writing one month before the 10-year anniversary of September 11, Dan O'Shea reflects on the small fraction of Americans who have shouldered the fight — and asks what the rest of the country owes the families of the fallen.