Background Image

...

I Went To Afghanistan In '96 To Write About Terrorist Training Camps South Of Jalalabad And Tora Bora, In The Mountains. I Was There Right Before The Taliban Took Over, Literally A Few Weeks Before They Took Kabul. The Frontline Wasn't Terribly Active, But It Was Definitely There. And They Swept Into Power.

-Sebastian Junger

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Went To Afghanistan

Sebastian Junger

...

I Went To Afghanistan In '96 To Write About Terrorist Training Camps South Of Jalalabad And Tora Bora, In The Mountains. I Was There Right Before The Taliban Took Over, Literally A Few Weeks Before They Took Kabul. The Frontline Wasn't Terribly Active, But It Was Definitely There. And They Swept Into Power.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Sebastian Junger

My Wife, Daniela, And I Live In An Old House From 1810 With Three Fireplaces At The End Of A Dead-end Dirt Road On Cape Cod, So I Turn The Trees Into Firewood For Us And A Friend Of Mine Sells The Rest.

No One Will Remember That President Obama Supported The Arab Spring If It Eventually Fails And The Region Collapses Back Into The Political Dark Ages. If We Actively Engage These Movements With Advice, With Money, And, When Necessary, With Military Force, Then We Get A Vote In How It All Turns Out.

The Coward’s Fear Of Death Stems In Large Part From His Incapacity To Love Anything But His Own Body. The Inability To Participate In Others’ Lives Stands In The Way Of His Developing Any Inner Resources Sufficient To Overcome The Terror Of Death. — J. Glenn Gary, The Warriors

I Was Surprised How Open And Unguarded The Military Was. I Expected More Scrutiny, More Supervision From Command.

The Negative Effects Of Combat Were Nightmares, And I'd Get Jumpy Around Certain Noises And Stuff, But You'd Have That After A Car Accident Or A Bad Divorce. Life's Filled With Trauma. You Don't Need To Go To War To Find It It's Going To Find You. We All Deal With It, And The Effects Go Away After Awhile. At Least They Did For Me.

I Had Grown Up During Vietnam. I Had No Connections To The U.s. Military, And I Had A Pretty Cynical Default Opinion About The U.s. Military.

Combat Isn't Where You Might Die -- Though That Does Happen -- It's Where You Find Out Whether You Get To Keep On Living. Don't Underestimate The Power Of That Revelation. Don't Underestimate The Things Young Men Will Wager In Order To Play That Game One More Time.

The Army Consists Of The First Infantry Division And Eight Million Replacements.

Infantry Division

At 19, Your Brain Hasn't Finished Wiring Itself. So The First Time You Have A Good Friend Die, Most People Don't Go Through That At 19. Soldiers Do. They're Facing Life In This Accelerated, Compressed Form, And A Lot Of Times, They're Not Ready For It.

Often People Who Live Through The Trauma Are Nostalgic When It's Over. When I Went Back To Bosnia 20 Years After The Brutal Civil War, Even People Who Had Been Badly Wounded Told Me They Missed Those Times. They Were Missing Their More Courageous Selves.

Society Can Give Its Young Men Almost Any Job And They'll Figure How To Do It. They'll Suffer For It And Die For It And Watch Their Friends Die For It, But In The End, It Will Get Done. That Only Means That Society Should Be Careful About What It Asks For. ... Soldiers Themselves Are Reluctant To Evaluate The Costs Of War, But Someone Must. That Evaluation, Ongoing And Unadulterated By Politics, May Be The One Thing A Country Absolutely Owes The Soldiers Who Defend Its Borders.

I Went To Afghanistan In '96 To Write About Terrorist Training Camps South Of Jalalabad And Tora Bora, In The Mountains. I Was There Right Before The Taliban Took Over, Literally A Few Weeks Before They Took Kabul. The Frontline Wasn't Terribly Active, But It Was Definitely There. And They Swept Into Power.

The Attacks Of 9/11 Came Out Of Afghanistan. It Was A Failed State, A Rogue Nation. That's Why Al Qaeda Was There In The First Place.

It's Fun To Have Money, But The More Money I Get, The Less Interesting It Becomes. If You Don't Have Very Much, You Have To Think About It. If You Are Starving, You Become Interested In Food. If You Are Struggling To Pay The Bills, Money Becomes Tragically Important.

Soldiers Join The Military To Serve Their Country, But When Bullets Are Flying, It's Hard To Fight For An Abstract Notion Like Patriotism. They're Fighting For The People Standing Next To Them, And It Doesn't Matter Who's A Republican Or A Democrat, Or Who's Black Or White Or Christian Or Muslim Or Gay Or Straight. If Congress And All Americans Could Manage To Ignore Those Differences, We Would Have A Perfect Country, But Somehow We Cannot Rise To That Level Of Nobility.

The Army Might Screw You And Your Girlfriend Might Dump You And The Enemy Might Kill You, But The Shared Commitment To Safeguard One Another’s Lives Is Unnegotiable And Only Deepens With Time. The Willingness To Die For Another Person Is A Form Of Love That Even Religions Fail To Inspire, And The Experience Of It Changes A Person Profoundly.

In My Eyes Marlantes Has Become The Pre-eminent Literary Voice On War Of Our Generation. He Is A Natural Storyteller And A Deeply Profound Thinker Who Not Only Illuminates War For Civilians, But Also Offers A Kind Of Spiritual Guidance To Vets Themselves. As This Generation Of Warriors Comes Home, They Will Be Enormously Helped By What Marlantes Has Written. I’m Sure He Will Literally Save Lives.

War Affected My Family A Lot, And I Was Quite Curious About It. I First Went Off To War In The Early 90's As A Journalist, Partly Out Of Curiosity And Partly Because I Needed A Career. War Reporting Has Been Very Glamorous And Exciting, And Everything Else That Young Men Like.

All Journalists Hope That Their Work Will Inspire A Broader Conversation. I Think That's Just What Journalism Is.

Bad News Is Dramatic. It Makes Good Tv. If There's A Firefight On The Same Day That A School Opens Up, The Media Will Show The Firefight Even Though The School Is Way More Important And Will Affect The Community For Much Longer.

Of The Primary Emotions, Fear Is The One That Bears Most Directly On Survival. Children Show Fear. Adults Try Not To, Maybe Because It's Shameful, Or, In Some Circumstances, Dangerous. The Fear Response Is Automatic, Though, And Your Body Runs Through Its Reflexes Whether You Want It To Or Not.

One Interesting Thing I Found Was That If You Take An Affluent Modern Society And Collapse It During A Crisis, Like A War Or A Natural Disaster, People Begin Relating In A More Ancient, Organic Way. They're Functioning In Small Interdependent Groups And Putting Others First. And Another Irony Is That Even In Terrible Times, Cooperating Makes People Feel Good.

A Grenade Launcher Will Easily Take Out A Tank; A Molotov Cocktail Placed In Its Air Intake Will Destroy One As Well.

Molotov Cocktail

There Is Some Evidence That Average Wave Heights Are Slowly Rising, And That Freak Waves Of Eighty Or Ninety Feet Are Becoming More Common. Wave Heights Off The Coast Of England Have Risen An Average Of 25 Percent Over The Past Couple Of Decades, Which Converts To A Twenty-foot Increase In The Highest Waves Over The Next Half Century. One Cause May Be The Tightening Of Environmental Laws, Which Has Reduced The Amount Of Oil Flushed Into The Oceans By Oil Tankers.

If You Get An Infection, You Get A Fever; The Fever Is Your Body Dealing With The Infection. If You Get Traumatized, Your Mind And Your Brain Have A Reaction To That Trauma. If You're Not Dreaming About It, Something's Probably Wrong.

I Have Been Working Since I Was 20, And I'm 38. I Actually Once Averaged Out What I Had Made Over My Professional Life. I Think I Could Have Made That Much As A Waiter Or An Insurance Salesman. You Know, I Spent So Many Years In My 20's Making $10,000 A Year.

I Hope I Get Married One Day.

People Who Do Really Dangerous Tasks Can't Afford To Sit Around And Discuss The Merits Of What They're Doing.

If Hardship Brought Out The Worst In People, The Human Race Wouldn't Have Survived. Right After 9/11, For Instance, The Murder Rate Actually Went Down In New York City. In World War Ii During The Blitz, The Civilians Of London Were Bombed Almost Every Night For Six Months, But Psychiatric Admissions Declined.

How Do Men Act On A Sinking Ship? Do They Hold Each Other? Do They Pass Around The Whisky? Do They Cry?

There's No Reason To Do Anything Twice, And Certainly No Reason To Do Something That Almost Killed You.

The Cause Doesn't Have To Be Righteous And Battle Doesn't Have To Be Winnable; But Over And Over Again Throughout History, Men Have Chosen To Die In Battle With Their Friends Rather Than To Flee On Their Own And Survive.

The Most Profound Question Is, "what Would I Risk Dying For?" The Natural Answer Is "for My Family." But For Most Of History, We Didn't Live In Families. We Lived In Small Communities That Gave Us Our Sense Of Safety And Place In The World, So The Natural Answer Would Be "for My People." The Blessing And The Tragedy Of Modern Life Is That We Don't Need Our Community To Survive Anymore. When We Lose That Idea, We Lose A Sense Of Who We Are.

Well, You Got To Remember, Bin Laden Killed 3,000 Americans And, In Some Ways, He And His Ideology Killed Tens Of Thousands Of His Fellow Muslims, Including Pakistanis. I Understand That That Was Provocative And Complicated For Pakistan, But Only If You Accept The Idea That He Was An Acceptable Member Of Pakistani Society.

War Is Life Multiplied By Some Number That No One Has Ever Heard Of.

I Think Human Society For Tens Of Thousands Of Years Has Sent Young Men Out In Small Groups To Do Things That Are Necessary But Very Dangerous. And They've Always Gotten Killed Doing It. And They've Always Turned It Into A Matter Of Honor And A Way Of Gaining Acceptance Back Into Society If They Survived.

I Don't Think Journalists In World War Ii Were Objective About The Nazis, And I Don't Think They Should Have Been.

During The Air War Of 1944, A Four-man Combat Crew On A B-17 Bomber Took A Vow To Never Abandon One Another No Matter How Desperate The Situation. The Aircraft Was Hit By Flak During A Mission And Went Into A Terminal Dive, And The Pilot Ordered Everyone To Bail Out. The Top Turret Gunner Obeyed The Order, But The Ball Turret Gunner Discovered That A Piece Of Flak Had Jammed His Turret And He Could Not Get Out. The Other Three Men In His Pact Could Have Bailed Out With The Parachutes, But They Stayed With Him Until The Plan Hit The Ground And Exploded. They All Died.

I Decided To Start A Medical Training Program For Freelancers, Only Freelancers. They're The Ones Who Are Doing Most Of The Combat Reporting. They're Taking Most Of The Risks. They're Absorbing Most Of The Casualties. And They're The Most Underserved And Under-resourced Of Everyone In The Entire News Business.

War Is A Lot Of Things And It's Useless To Pretend That Exciting Isn't One Of Them. (pg. 144)

Maybe The Ultimate Wound Is The One That Makes You Miss The War You Got It In.

I’ve Stopped War Reporting. I Realized That I’d Answered All Of My Questions About War And About Myself.

Each Javelin Round Costs $80,000, And The Idea That It's Fired By A Guy Who Doesn't Make That In A Year At A Guy Who Doesn't Make That In A Lifetime Is Somehow So Outrageous It Almost Makes The War Seem Winnable.

An Adventure Is A Situation Where The Outcome Is Not Entirely Within Your Control. It Is Up To Fate, In Other Words

When You're Scared, You're Still Hanging On To Life. When You're Ready To Die, You Let It Go. A Sort Of Emptying Out Occurs, A Giving Up On The World That Seems Oddly Familiar Even If You've Never Done It Before.

My Reporting In Africa Wouldn't Be Political Per Se, But It's Certainly The Point Of My Reporting - And Of A Lot Of Other Reporters I Know: Human Suffering Is Bad, And If Reporting Stories About It Brings It To Light And Someone Does Something, That's Part Of The Point Of Journalism. And It's A Thin Line Between That And Activism, And You Have To Be Careful About That.

The Only Thing That Makes Battle Psychologically Tolerable Is The Brotherhood Among Soldiers. You Need Each Other To Get By.

I Don't Think People Would Climb Mountains Or Jump Off Bridges With Parachutes Or Kayak Class V Rapids If Those Things Didn't Offer The Brief And Horrible Illusion Of Imminent Death. They Would Just Be Complicated, Time-consuming Endeavors That We'd Steer Well Clear Of Because They Got In The Way Of Real Life.

I Think, Unfortunately, We Live In A World Where People Attack Other People And I Think A Legitimate Rationale For War Is The Saving Of Human Life, The Saving Of Lives Of People Who Cannot Defend Themselves.

Right Now, America Doesn't Ask Us To Do Anything Besides Pay Taxes. We Don't Even Have To Vote. But As Psychologists Will Tell You, When You Have To Sacrifice For Something, You Value It More. What About National Service For Young People? Everybody Between 18 And 24 Could Spend A Year Or Two Working For This Country In Some Capacity. It'd Be An Amazing Thing. And It Would Mix This Country Racially, Culturally, Economically.

Here's An Easy Way To See If A War Movie Is Being Truthful: If You See An Explosion On A Faraway Hillside And The Sound Of The Explosion And The Detonation Of The Bomb Happen At The Same Time - If They're Putting The Sound And The Vision Together In The Same Moment - They're Going Toward Our Cultural Understanding Of War, Not The Reality Of War.

Firemen Don't Talk About Whether A Burning Warehouse Is Worth Saving.

Traditional Albanian Society Was Based On A Clan System And Was Further Divided Into Brotherhoods And Bajraks. The Bajrak System Identified A Local Leader, Called A Bajrakar, Who Could Be Counted On To Provide A Certain Number Of Men For Military Duty.

No Matter How Many People You Kill, Using A Machine Gun In Battle Is Not A War Crime Because It Does Not Cause Unnecessary Suffering; It Simply Performs Its Job Horrifyingly Well.

If You Shell A Military Base And Happen To Kill Civilians, You Have Not Committed A War Crime; If You Deliberately Target Cities And Towns, You Have.

Who Wants A Life Of Ease? And Who Wants A Life In The Office That You Hate, And Who Wants To Play Golf?

I Would Never Want To Pass A Law Limiting Freedom Of Speech, But That Doesn't Mean We Have To Condone Statements That Undermine Basic National Unity And Respect. Imagine Being Asked To Defend A Country Where Some Citizens Say The Man In The White House Isn't Their President. Or A Major Presidential Contender Accuses The Commander In Chief Of Not Even Being A U.s. Citizen. Those Kinds Of Statements Erode Trust In Our Democracy, And It's Up To Both Parties To Publicly Reject Them. We Have To Restore Confidence That We Are A Nation That Loves And Believes In Itself.

I Think Objectivity Is Like This Strange Myth That People Think You're Supposed To Achieve, But Actually, The Dirty Little Secret Is That It's Not Attainable Any More Than Pure Justice Is Attainable By The Courts.

Ironically, Though Our Society Of Affluence Brings Safety And Stability, It Doesn't Bring Psychological Health. As Wealth Goes Up, Suicide And Depression Rates Tend To Go Up. I Read One Study That Compared Women In North America With Women In Nigeria, And The Group With The Highest Rates Of Depression Was Urban North American Women, Which Is The Wealthiest. Now, There Are Obviously Huge Stresses That Come With Poverty, But The Poorer The Society, The More Collaborative People Have To Be.

I'm A Good Liberal, And I Grew Up In A Very Liberal Family And Had Very Strongly Held Beliefs.

In Some Ways, Risk-taking Is The Ultimate Act Of Self-indulgence , An Obscene Insult To The Preciousness Of Life. And Yet, How Can One Dismiss Something That Persists Despite Every Reasonable Theory That It Shouldn't?

Trending Author

Meshell Ndegeocello

Category