The Havok Journal | Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

• Iran’s “’Tis Only a Fleshwound” Strategy April 10, 2026
  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned about lies. Monty Python warned about something else entirely—delusion. Oddly enough, the latter might be more relevant right now. Because if you want to understand how Iran has approached its ongoing confrontation with Israel and the United States, you could do worse than revisiting a ridiculous scene from a 1975 comedy. The […]
  Charles Faint
• Holding My Breath Before Knowing April 10, 2026
  Proud Gold Star Mother of Sgt. First Class Kristoffer Domeij The first casualty of war is not a body. It’s the breath held too long by a parent of a soldier deployed to war. Every time the news breaks, as a Gold Star mom, I think about the families who don’t yet know they are […]
  Scoti Domeij
• The Day I Got Kicked Out of the Army April 10, 2026
  There is a part of me that will always, no matter what, think about the worst day of my life. Sure, picking up body parts of a fellow soldier after an IED strike was awful. Witnessing the horrors mankind inflicts upon itself during war is awful. Being a cop is always awful, the lifeless corpse […]
  Sergeant Ayman Kafel, MSC
• The Alibi Factory April 9, 2026
  The cleverest racket in public life is not corruption. Corruption is almost refreshingly honest. It leaves fingerprints, invoices, cousins on payroll, and a marina somewhere. The truly sophisticated scam is moral explanation as self-exoneration. That trick is much classier. You take a social failure, wrap it in a grand historical indictment, repeat the approved diagnosis […]
  Tammy Pondsmith
• Inversion of Loyalty and Conspiracy of Mediocrity April 9, 2026
  By Sam Yudin Nothing does more to corrupt and undermine mission accomplishment or team success and well-being than an inversion of loyalty or a conspiracy of mediocrity. The focus must be on the mission first and the team always. This requires loyalties to be ranked and aligned so the team can focus on continuous improvement […]
  Special Guest