Karaka on WAR at SWJ Blog
Blogfriend Karaka has a review of WAR
Junger’s War , Review by Karaka Pend
….Part of the purpose of Junger’s exercise is to engage as fully in the experience of being at Restrepo, of living with the men of Battle Company, as he can given the constraints of his embed. He mostly succeeds in that, in part because he let himself get swept up in the life-and-death fraternitas of it all, and perhaps more importantly because Battle Company allowed him to become a part of their brotherhood. It would have be a rather different story had he not won his way into the human terrain of that mountaintop.
….Throughout, Junger’s soldiers describe combat, describe firefight, as an addiction or a high; and perhaps that is the only real framework in which their longing for conflict or engagement with the enemy can be understood. If there is no greater high than when you are protecting your brother, how do you return to a world where you need not always watch your brother’s back?
ADDENDUM:
Video interview of Sebastian Junger by NRO. Hat tip to Lexington Green.
June 8th, 2010 at 12:58 am
Cheers, zen!
June 10th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
I don’t think soldiers are addicted to the "high" of protecting their brothers, I think they’re addicted to the "high" of inflicting violence.We are humans. We have killer instincts. Our bodies are evolved to eat meat. It’s absolutely natural for us to enjoy killing.The only weird part is that we mostly don’t hunt for food any more, so we have to kill each other.
June 11th, 2010 at 3:39 am
That was very Martin van Creveldish, John 😉