10 ms·

The Born Soldier

74 points by wormold 10y ago

GuiA 10y ago
It is too often assumed that if someone is at home in war and likes to fight, then that makes him somehow cruel or lacking in compassion or even sociopathic. The born warriors I lived with wept when their friends died, were often frightened, struggled with issues of when to kill and when not to kill, missed their girlfriends, and appreciated the song of a bird or a beautiful jungle stream just like the rest of us. They, however, experienced war not as something to endure but as something meaningful to them, something they wanted to engage in more than anything else. Think about a born musician who gets clinically depressed if she is unable to play her instrument, or how differently she experiences a string quartet from the rest of us. The taking of a human life is always tragic. I wonder if these "born warriors" could be at home as firefighters, field medics, or similar professions. Probably not. During my own war, I had the privilege of living in close proximity to born warriors. The Marine Corps has a lot of them. I am not one of them. I would consider myself a citizen soldier, and most of the young men I served with were citizen soldiers as well. There is an oft quoted statistics about how 80% (or whatever high number) of soldiers don't fire at the enemy. Perhaps the remaining 20% are the "born warriors" then.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  I think the author's assumption here is out of whack. There is nothing noble about warfare, it doesn't compare to playing an instrument. BTW, I've been to war myself.
  - dfc 10y ago
    You mention your combat experience as if it establishes your credibility to adjudicate the nobility of war. Mr. Marlantes is also a combat veteran. He was not awarded the Navy Cross for his time in the rear with the gear. More importantly, given this piece or any of his other writings, I do not think it is accurate to say that his writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
    - zepto 10y ago
      It does establish his credibility by comparison with someone who has never seen it first hand and is basing their option on media reports and fiction.
      - dfc 10y ago
        I apologize if I am being dense but this is such a strange position to me that I do not understand how you could arrive at this conclusion. I am genuinely interested in understanding what is that I am missing. "War" seems to be a distinctly societal enterprise; this societal component is so important that it does not make sense to think about it on an individual level. If you do approach "war" at the individual level how do you distinguish it from simply carrying out violence? I also have trouble with the notion that someone is better equipped to identify and assess moral principles and ideals (I dont think it matters if you are a universalist or relativist here) simply because of one's participation in and proximity to combat. Is a mercenary as credible as someone that was motivated by political idealism? Bloodlust? The simple desire to avoid a prison sentence? What do you do with the devout Quaker who would rather be incarcerated than violate their commitment to pacifism? In general how does someone establish there bona fides for the identification and characterization of moral principles and ideals? On an entirely separate note: I don't care if Chesty Puller or Audie Murphy show up; I think it is absurd for anyone to maintain that Karl Malantes' writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
        zepto 10y ago
        I think you raise a good point, which I interpret as something like a statement that moral philosophy is complex and situated in a broad social and historical context, and having been a participant in combat is irrelevant as a qualification for doing it well. I tend to agree. However in the absence of a well informed and reasoned moral argument, I still think that first hand experience lends credibility to a commenter over one who has consumed only media reports.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > There is nothing noble about warfare Sure there is. There's gallantry and bravery and … nobility. There's also ugliness and cruelty and murder. Clauswitz commented famously that war is diplomacy carried out by other means; more accurately, war is humanity carried out by other means. It's inhumane but carried out by men; it's uncivilised but carried out with the fruits of industrial civilisation. In short, it's paradoxical. I know that the author is right: there are people who are suited for war. They're not psychopaths — it's not that they don't have empathy for others (they do), but I wonder if they have reduced empathy for themselves.
    - RUG3Y 10y ago
      I disagree that bravery and gallantry are qualities of war - they're human qualities that war sometimes reveals. A man's bravery doesn't lend nobility to war, in my opinion. I generally see war as exploitative. I can see where Clauswitz is coming from but those are intellectual arguments to me, they don't carry a whole lot of weight when bullets are flying and your buddies are getting hurt. Of course, I'm just sharing my opinion. I don't have any data to support how I feel about this.
      - Retra 10y ago
        I don't understand why you'd say war is itself exploitative in lieu of those who are participating in it in exploitative ways. I would agree that war is an opportunity for exploitation to occur. But then maybe I don't understand what war is in a way that is different from a bunch of people who are willing to go to battle (for their own various reasons.)
    - Pamar 10y ago
      I suggest watching "The Hurt Locker" for a very interesting portrait of what you describe ("reduced empathy for self").
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    You may think nothing is noble about war, but by and large, you're probably in disagreement with the majority of the ~120 billion humans who have ever lived. Particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, war was generally seen as a noble thing and generally a focal part of high culture. Think of the glorious portrayal of "doomed last stands"--the Alamo, Pickett's Charge, the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's largely only WWI (it should be noted that the German High Command fairly indisputably saw a coming Great War as an ultimately good thing--the dispute is mostly in how much this influenced their actions immediately prior to the war) that created a massive cultural cynicism in the portrayal of war. And even after WWI and the Vietnam War, we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner (even if critics tend to be less thrilled about it).
    - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
      Yes, you've sorta made out point-we don't live in the pre-20th century world, the world of those battles are long gone. And the American Civil War was (since you mentioned Pickett's Charge) more of a porto-WW1 in many respects rather than some sort of bizarre image of a masculine gentleman's war that you seem to have.
    - vacri 10y ago
      Napoleon himself stated that you had to trick the common man into going to war. Hitler said similar as well. War is glorified so people continue to be soldiers and kings get their muscle, but it's just not true that the majority of people who have ever lived think that war is noble - particularly those who have seen war. History also doesn't talk about most of the endless numbers of doomed last stands, only the occasional one gets special mention. > we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner Not so in continental Europe. The US has barely had it's homelands touched in half a dozen generations - the US people are very removed from the reality of war, so revelling in the glory has little tangible cost these days. One example is that the entire decade-plus of US involvement in Iraq has seen fewer US deaths than the bloodiest single day in WWI saw (counting all sides), yet American talking heads keep on crapping on about the 'high' level of US casualties in Iraq. > the Charge of the Light Brigade Depends on your nationality. For Australians, our 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was a great success. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29#Light_Horse_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29...
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    There's quite a lot "noble" about war, in the sense of "aristocratic". I think this every time I see a TV news story about a dead soldier and the soldier's family have a "normal" accent, and the commanding officer sounds like someone from a BBC period drama. But it extends to whose interests we fight the wars for in the first place.
    - RUG3Y 10y ago
      I think your response gets at part of what I wanted to say, but couldn't think of how to say at the time. War is not in the interest of those who fight it, most of the time.
  - wbl 10y ago
    War saved my grandparents from Hitler, freed the slaves of the US South, ended the ghetto and brought rule of law to all of Europe, freed the US from England, ended the tyranny of the British monarchy in favor of Parliamentary rule, brought freedom of religion to the Netherlands, etc. Not all wars are fought in nobel causes, and even the nobelist war means the death of countless innocent individuals and scores of soldiers. But sometimes it is heroic.
- Bulkington 10y ago
  I don't see anything in Marlantes's background that qualifies him to make clinical assessments re: sociopaths and depression. I do see a lot that says he's been quite gung ho for some time--not that there's anything wrong with that. See also "fanboy" and "humble brag." But this is a Memorial Day piece, so... Side note: How are Americans supposed to recognize the sacrifice made by "contract security" personnel, going forward? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marlantes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marlantes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outing_(Seinfeld) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outing_(Seinfeld)
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I know a guy who might be considered a born warrior in that respect. He joined up to the army, then left a couple of years later, because he didn't get deployed (he was in the NZ army, and joined around the same time that we were pulling out of Afghanistan). He was then training to be a firefighter, before settling in being a nurse of all things. It wasn't that he wanted to fight, he just has a hero complex, not that a hero complex is a bad thing.
sandworm101 10y ago
These aren't born warriors. They are built. The all seem to have joined up young and spend many of their formative years in the military. They are not born/bred into military units, nor were they raised from birth as fighters. The fact that young men take to soldiering isn't unusual. There is some feedback here. Soldiers create the environment that creates people like themselves. Visit any US-allied base to see what I mean. The US is a very young force, with kids joining up and leaving before hitting 30. That makes the US today very similar to the US during the Vietnam era or the UK during WWI/II. This results in a very different culture than in other nations (Canada, Germany, AU) where soldiering is more of a career. Young men create around themselves an environment that supports them. It is therefore no shock that they feel more at home in that rarified environment.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >That makes the US today very similar to the US during the Vietnam era or the UK during WWI/II. Not really, no. The average age of a US soldier in Vietnam was 19. In Iraq it was 28. That's a huge difference, and you don't get an average of 28 without having a lot of guys in their 30s.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Soldiers, but which service. 28 seems very high for US army combat troops. Throw in the navy/airforce with all their specialists and I could see higher numbers. The army on the ground is seems far younger than 28. If not, then the differences in culture must be from something altogether more complicated.
    - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
      The National Guard and Army Reserve were deployed extensively in the Bush years. I can very readily see that 28 age (and you need a firmer definition of "combat" as well).
  - chipsy 10y ago
    The "19" figure is mythical - just google "average age of soldiers in Vietnam" and you'll see that the real figures are known to be younger than other recent wars, just not so extreme - around 22-23 years old depending on the exact statistic you're working from. That said, the Paul Hardcastle song "19" is still pretty good. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM
analognoise 10y ago
This is why drones are insidious - anyone can press a button. You move from some percentage of born warriors, to 100% keyboard warriors.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  Armchair general here - from what I have heard drones take its toll on the "keyboard warriors" too. And I am not that sure that drone strikes are morally different from any point in history where one side had a uncontested technological superiority.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Drones are not "insidious" - war isn't supposed to be fair. Once you decide to go to war you try to achieve your objectives with the minimum loss of life among your own troops.
  - analognoise 10y ago
    It lowers the bar to entry - it's the same way we used 'contractors' in Iraq and their deaths weren't reported along with our casualties. It detaches the public from the military movements, because they appear to be zero cost. Drones are the same.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      By that logic any effective weapon lowers the bar to entry. Should we equip our troops with bronze spears? Soldiers don't decide when the country goes to war; when we ask them to go we should provide the best equipment we can.
    - Retra 10y ago
      Drones do lower the cost of war and the barrier to entry, but they also make war a lot less like war and a lot more like policing. So the question is: why do we not we require an act of congress to do policing? How much 'stability' should our society require?
Nimitz14 10y ago
> They, however, experienced war not as something to endure but as something meaningful to them, something they wanted to engage in more than anything else. "One man looks at a dying bird, and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. That Death has got the final word; it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it."
richardjdare 10y ago
I am currently reading "The Glass Bees", Ernst Junger's scifi novel from 1957. It's about a former cavalryman fallen on hard times who goes for a shady job interview with a technology mogul. Its kind of an extended meditation on changing times and technology; the protagonist contrasting his military life with the high-tech world he is about to enter. The novel's tech mogul Zapparoni (described in Bruce Sterling's introduction as a cross between Walt Disney and Bill Gates) made his fortune making movies that you "entered like a garden" (This has to be one of the earliest references to video games in literature?) and manufactures tiny insect-like robots which work together "like a telephone exchange", performing such tasks as cleaning the pollen from the air. As Bruce Sterling notes, this sounds more like something from our own internet age than 50s scifi. I think its a remarkable book. Junger is an interesting personality. I can't figure him out or get close to him at all. I really want to read "Drogen und Rausch", his book about his drug experiences. What happens when a former WW1 stormtrooper takes LSD? Unfortunately there's no English translation.
- theoh 10y ago
  I've read some of "Storm of Steel", which definitely substantiates his reputation as a "military aesthete". The issue of how one might enter a movie "like a garden" is going to be a big one for VR. Narratology may have some models which can be applied: in particular the idea of deixis seems relevant. See Mary Galbraith's theory of deixis: https://www.academia.edu/1100316/Deictic_shift_theory_and_the_poetics_of_involvement_in_narrative https://www.academia.edu/1100316/Deictic_shift_theory_and_th... The idea of the Brocken spectre, an atmospheric phenomenon appearing to produce a huge, projected figure of the human observer, is also quite common in literature, sometimes as a metaphor for simply chasing one's own tail. It's thoroughly deictic and as such I think it's a good thing to keep in mind. How more than one player/viewer can be facilitated in the same world is an interesting area for research... I'd be interested to hear any current ideas from the game/hollywood world on that point! Also: "It is difficult to give an idea of the vast extent of modern mathematics. The word `extent' is not the right one; I mean extent crowded with beautiful detail-not an extent of mere uniformity such as an objectless plain, but of a tract of beautiful country seen at first in the distance, but which will bear to be rambled through and studied in every detail of hillside and valley, stream, rock, wood, and flower. But, as for every thing else, so for a mathematical theory-beauty can be perceived but not explained." (Arthur Cayley, 1883)
arca_vorago 10y ago
I'm very torn on this article and the positions it's author takes. I am a USMC combat vet of OIF, from a long line of warriors (all the way back to when we were Hessian mercenaries). I have been steeped in the ways of war, and even though I am a regular old sysadmin to most, it will always be a part of me, and me of it. So it confuses me when a Marine who has experienced as much as the author, including having been rewarded a Navy Cross for taking a bunker hill, says things like: "Born warriors are interested in war and fighting, not philosophy or politics." and "They don’t think or talk about whether war is moral. They don’t ponder why they are fighting for their country or whether their country was right to put them in battle. They don’t think about foreign policy—and they certainly don’t make it." I can see the point he is trying to make, but I disagree vehemently with these particular statements. For me, it was the realization that a true warrior not only does, but should... no, must take an active interest in politics, philosophy, foreign-policy, and the reasons behind the war they are engaged in. I would consider myself a born warrior, but I didn't go merc (modern term: contractor), or otherwise stay in the fight just to fight. Why? Because I realized, even from the very small picture a mcsf/infantry grunt, that there were lies in abundance being told to us, even to our CO's, in Iraq. I got out so that I could educate myself and I have spent the majority of my free time trying to understand the bigger geopolitical/geostrategic picture since then. Just within the last few years have I begun to even feel as if I had a grasp on these concepts enough to claim a modicum of understanding. Yes, I have known guys who seemed to excel in combat, who went contractor and have generally stayed involved in the action side of things, but, quite honestly, while I would love to have them by my side in the heat of a firefight, their failure to understand the bigger picture is part of the reason we failed so spectacularly in the middle east in the first place. When you have ground pounding knuckle-draggers, ready to destroy the enemy, but that aren't able to see a grander scheme, they become fodder, dispensable tools in a cause even they don't understand, and their lives are spent far too frivolously. Mr. Marlantes is correct that in the moment of battle we don't care about these things, because in that moment you just want to live, save your friends, and kill the enemy. It's the downtime when you should be preparing, recovering, thinking, studying, mentally and physically, for the next fight. This is why Mr. Marlantes fails to understand Jungers statement that, "There’s nothing worse for a soldier than boredom.” For the born warriors, often the boredom allows bad things to surface they would rather not face, rather not think, rather not contemplate. Battle is like eating an extremely hot pepper; if you eat more you delay the pain of taking that first breath. That's my theory why many of what the author calls "born warriors" hate downtime. (besides the normal reasons all servicemen/women hate downtime). It is for this reason that the ones most gifted in war but ungifted in larger thinking are to me, not the true "born warriors". Yes there is a certain adrenaline addiction that can occur, and a certain artistry to combat most don't understand, but I think that a warrior without philosophy isn't a warrior at all, but rather a tool. One that can be, and almost always is, misused and then discarded. For me it all boils down to the fact that we swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Full stop. The warriors Mr. Marlantes speaks of have done nothing of the sort, despite their gallantry in particular battle. We have allowed our true enemies, both foreign and domestic, to embroil us in foreign entanglements, abuse our military might, and through the permanent alliances our first president warned us about, undermined our national system of economic protectionism and our uniquely American philosophy of individualism. Personally, I think we are being set up as the fall guys so that the supranational oligarchy can finally put the last nail in the coffin of the American revolution and continue on with their plan of global government conveniently under their control. I also think the internet has been surprisingly effective in delaying this, which is why the internet is the next primary target of the oligarchs. With a surveillance engine the Stasi would have drooled over in place, the turn-key totalitarian system is in place, and now all it needs is the right dictator to turn it on. We need to stop knee-jerk warring, and strike at the root of the evil. The oligarchy. https://youtu.be/L-hkKmhssSU?t=69 https://youtu.be/L-hkKmhssSU?t=69
leroy_masochist 10y ago
Why is Karl Marlantes of all people reviewing one of the classics in the NY Review of Books this week? I feel like I'm missing some context like, "In this installment of Legends Reviewing Legends, Matterhorn author and NC recipient Karl Marlantes reviews the timeless classic 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger". By the way if you liked Storm of Steel check out Black Edelweiss or for that matter Blood and Steel. One of the things that truly throws my head for a loop is the extent to which the Prussian military culture has influenced so many organizations, both military and civilian, for both the good and the bad over more than a century.
- arjie 10y ago
  New Edition coming, with his foreword. It's at the bottom of the article. It's a publicity piece. And it worked. I'm going to buy it.
archeopterix 10y ago
I'm not very interested in demuring that war is a desirable thing. One man can profess all his love for the addiction of going into action, and write so many valentine's day cards about the thrill of testing his metal. To me it rings as hollow as a junkie's pining for dope. But it won't bury the aftermath, nor will it obviate the grind of the slower churn, when stalemate is intractable. The police state in between. The thought police of "patriotism," or rather jingoism. The miserable post-dictatorships and the corruption of the spoils. Those who flee their victories and armistices, to find the rush of more action elsewhere are cowards in their own way. Nevermind the wake of ashes behind them.
mpbm 10y ago
There's a philosophical point that always gets skipped over in these discussions. It's that there are TWO ways of doing good. The first is to create good things. The second is to destroy not-good things. Destruction is not inherently bad. Bad things are bad; destruction is just a means to a good or bad end. So, an artist who crafts a new torture device (means) in order to more creatively cause pain (ends) is bad. A soldier who crafts blitzkrieg (means) in order to bypass battles that aren't necessary to win the war (ends) is good. It's important to place these concepts into a consistent framework before discussing warfare. Marlantes doesn't state this framework explicitly, but he alludes to it throughout the piece with ideas like "Jünger sees the beauty—it’s everywhere in his memoir—and perhaps you will see it too. This doesn’t need to change how you judge war; coral snakes and tsunamis are beautiful too." The only part of the piece I don't get is "Jünger often uses such humor" referring to "gallows humor." I haven't read the book, but if Junger described everything in matter-of-fact terms, and really was Marlantes' "born warrier", then it's entirely possible he's not being funny and literally thought he was being "graced with an abundance of trench mortars." Kind of like how the narrator in Fight Club believes "you have to fight" but also explains that normal people do anything to avoid a fight (the only person he could get to swing at him was a priest after he messed with his bible). If you need fighting, then you need someone to fight with. That's why Tyler compares self improvement to masturbation. It's something you can do by yourself. Self destruction requires someone else because your lizard brain won't actually let you take yourself past the edge. You need someone else to push you. Also, for what it's worth, there's an important distinction between a solider and a warrior. A warrior is just a person who does an activity in a particular way. You can be a "jogging warrior" if you do it right. A soldier can only exist in a particular context. I'm not sure if Marlantes was contrasting the title "born soldier" against his own "born warrior" idea. A great illustration of the difference is in The Gates of Fire. It describes the Spartan's approach to soldiering and how it differs from their opponents approach to warrioring. For example, since their opponents were farmers and craftsmen, not soldiers, they had to get psyched up together in order to fight as a mob. So the Spartans would watch them gradually work themselves up and then start the fight at exactly the wrong moment, since as soldiers they didn't need to get excited to fight.
w23j 10y ago
This is a great interview by Tim Ferriss with Jocko Willink, who probably can be considered a "Born Soldier" in a similar vein: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/25/jocko-willink/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/25/jocko-willink/ The huge difference in perception from what is "usual" that the author of the linked article describes, struck me most when listening to it. Examples: Dying in battle -> That's the plan Battle of Ramadi -> Pinnacle of life By the way I am not judging this attitude either way. It's just interesting how different some people look at life.
ux-app 10y ago
this is war fetishism, pure and simple. For some, war is romantic and they like to ruminate over it. It's gross. Those that enjoy it are animals.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  this is meat fetishism, pure and simple. For some, meat is romantic and they like to masticate it. It's gross. Those that enjoy it are murderers.
  - ux-app 10y ago
    not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing.
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      I generally agreed, and enjoyed your structure. Any disagreement was with the last line which implied warmongers are even half as good as animals.

74 points by wormold 10y ago

GuiA 10y ago

It is too often assumed that if someone is at home in war and likes to fight, then that makes him somehow cruel or lacking in compassion or even sociopathic. The born warriors I lived with wept when their friends died, were often frightened, struggled with issues of when to kill and when not to kill, missed their girlfriends, and appreciated the song of a bird or a beautiful jungle stream just like the rest of us. They, however, experienced war not as something to endure but as something meaningful to them, something they wanted to engage in more than anything else. Think about a born musician who gets clinically depressed if she is unable to play her instrument, or how differently she experiences a string quartet from the rest of us. The taking of a human life is always tragic. I wonder if these "born warriors" could be at home as firefighters, field medics, or similar professions. Probably not. During my own war, I had the privilege of living in close proximity to born warriors. The Marine Corps has a lot of them. I am not one of them. I would consider myself a citizen soldier, and most of the young men I served with were citizen soldiers as well. There is an oft quoted statistics about how 80% (or whatever high number) of soldiers don't fire at the enemy. Perhaps the remaining 20% are the "born warriors" then.

RUG3Y 10y ago
I think the author's assumption here is out of whack. There is nothing noble about warfare, it doesn't compare to playing an instrument. BTW, I've been to war myself.
- dfc 10y ago
  You mention your combat experience as if it establishes your credibility to adjudicate the nobility of war. Mr. Marlantes is also a combat veteran. He was not awarded the Navy Cross for his time in the rear with the gear. More importantly, given this piece or any of his other writings, I do not think it is accurate to say that his writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
  - zepto 10y ago
    It does establish his credibility by comparison with someone who has never seen it first hand and is basing their option on media reports and fiction.
    - dfc 10y ago
      I apologize if I am being dense but this is such a strange position to me that I do not understand how you could arrive at this conclusion. I am genuinely interested in understanding what is that I am missing. "War" seems to be a distinctly societal enterprise; this societal component is so important that it does not make sense to think about it on an individual level. If you do approach "war" at the individual level how do you distinguish it from simply carrying out violence? I also have trouble with the notion that someone is better equipped to identify and assess moral principles and ideals (I dont think it matters if you are a universalist or relativist here) simply because of one's participation in and proximity to combat. Is a mercenary as credible as someone that was motivated by political idealism? Bloodlust? The simple desire to avoid a prison sentence? What do you do with the devout Quaker who would rather be incarcerated than violate their commitment to pacifism? In general how does someone establish there bona fides for the identification and characterization of moral principles and ideals? On an entirely separate note: I don't care if Chesty Puller or Audie Murphy show up; I think it is absurd for anyone to maintain that Karl Malantes' writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
      - zepto 10y ago
        I think you raise a good point, which I interpret as something like a statement that moral philosophy is complex and situated in a broad social and historical context, and having been a participant in combat is irrelevant as a qualification for doing it well. I tend to agree. However in the absence of a well informed and reasoned moral argument, I still think that first hand experience lends credibility to a commenter over one who has consumed only media reports.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > There is nothing noble about warfare Sure there is. There's gallantry and bravery and … nobility. There's also ugliness and cruelty and murder. Clauswitz commented famously that war is diplomacy carried out by other means; more accurately, war is humanity carried out by other means. It's inhumane but carried out by men; it's uncivilised but carried out with the fruits of industrial civilisation. In short, it's paradoxical. I know that the author is right: there are people who are suited for war. They're not psychopaths — it's not that they don't have empathy for others (they do), but I wonder if they have reduced empathy for themselves.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    I disagree that bravery and gallantry are qualities of war - they're human qualities that war sometimes reveals. A man's bravery doesn't lend nobility to war, in my opinion. I generally see war as exploitative. I can see where Clauswitz is coming from but those are intellectual arguments to me, they don't carry a whole lot of weight when bullets are flying and your buddies are getting hurt. Of course, I'm just sharing my opinion. I don't have any data to support how I feel about this.
    - Retra 10y ago
      I don't understand why you'd say war is itself exploitative in lieu of those who are participating in it in exploitative ways. I would agree that war is an opportunity for exploitation to occur. But then maybe I don't understand what war is in a way that is different from a bunch of people who are willing to go to battle (for their own various reasons.)
  - Pamar 10y ago
    I suggest watching "The Hurt Locker" for a very interesting portrait of what you describe ("reduced empathy for self").
- jcranmer 10y ago
  You may think nothing is noble about war, but by and large, you're probably in disagreement with the majority of the ~120 billion humans who have ever lived. Particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, war was generally seen as a noble thing and generally a focal part of high culture. Think of the glorious portrayal of "doomed last stands"--the Alamo, Pickett's Charge, the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's largely only WWI (it should be noted that the German High Command fairly indisputably saw a coming Great War as an ultimately good thing--the dispute is mostly in how much this influenced their actions immediately prior to the war) that created a massive cultural cynicism in the portrayal of war. And even after WWI and the Vietnam War, we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner (even if critics tend to be less thrilled about it).
  - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
    Yes, you've sorta made out point-we don't live in the pre-20th century world, the world of those battles are long gone. And the American Civil War was (since you mentioned Pickett's Charge) more of a porto-WW1 in many respects rather than some sort of bizarre image of a masculine gentleman's war that you seem to have.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Napoleon himself stated that you had to trick the common man into going to war. Hitler said similar as well. War is glorified so people continue to be soldiers and kings get their muscle, but it's just not true that the majority of people who have ever lived think that war is noble - particularly those who have seen war. History also doesn't talk about most of the endless numbers of doomed last stands, only the occasional one gets special mention. > we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner Not so in continental Europe. The US has barely had it's homelands touched in half a dozen generations - the US people are very removed from the reality of war, so revelling in the glory has little tangible cost these days. One example is that the entire decade-plus of US involvement in Iraq has seen fewer US deaths than the bloodiest single day in WWI saw (counting all sides), yet American talking heads keep on crapping on about the 'high' level of US casualties in Iraq. > the Charge of the Light Brigade Depends on your nationality. For Australians, our 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was a great success. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29#Light_Horse_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29...
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  There's quite a lot "noble" about war, in the sense of "aristocratic". I think this every time I see a TV news story about a dead soldier and the soldier's family have a "normal" accent, and the commanding officer sounds like someone from a BBC period drama. But it extends to whose interests we fight the wars for in the first place.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    I think your response gets at part of what I wanted to say, but couldn't think of how to say at the time. War is not in the interest of those who fight it, most of the time.
- wbl 10y ago
  War saved my grandparents from Hitler, freed the slaves of the US South, ended the ghetto and brought rule of law to all of Europe, freed the US from England, ended the tyranny of the British monarchy in favor of Parliamentary rule, brought freedom of religion to the Netherlands, etc. Not all wars are fought in nobel causes, and even the nobelist war means the death of countless innocent individuals and scores of soldiers. But sometimes it is heroic.
Bulkington 10y ago
I don't see anything in Marlantes's background that qualifies him to make clinical assessments re: sociopaths and depression. I do see a lot that says he's been quite gung ho for some time--not that there's anything wrong with that. See also "fanboy" and "humble brag." But this is a Memorial Day piece, so... Side note: How are Americans supposed to recognize the sacrifice made by "contract security" personnel, going forward? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marlantes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marlantes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outing_(Seinfeld) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outing_(Seinfeld)
toomanybeersies 10y ago
I know a guy who might be considered a born warrior in that respect. He joined up to the army, then left a couple of years later, because he didn't get deployed (he was in the NZ army, and joined around the same time that we were pulling out of Afghanistan). He was then training to be a firefighter, before settling in being a nurse of all things. It wasn't that he wanted to fight, he just has a hero complex, not that a hero complex is a bad thing.

sandworm101 10y ago

These aren't born warriors. They are built. The all seem to have joined up young and spend many of their formative years in the military. They are not born/bred into military units, nor were they raised from birth as fighters. The fact that young men take to soldiering isn't unusual. There is some feedback here. Soldiers create the environment that creates people like themselves. Visit any US-allied base to see what I mean. The US is a very young force, with kids joining up and leaving before hitting 30. That makes the US today very similar to the US during the Vietnam era or the UK during WWI/II. This results in a very different culture than in other nations (Canada, Germany, AU) where soldiering is more of a career. Young men create around themselves an environment that supports them. It is therefore no shock that they feel more at home in that rarified environment.

gozur88 10y ago
>That makes the US today very similar to the US during the Vietnam era or the UK during WWI/II. Not really, no. The average age of a US soldier in Vietnam was 19. In Iraq it was 28. That's a huge difference, and you don't get an average of 28 without having a lot of guys in their 30s.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Soldiers, but which service. 28 seems very high for US army combat troops. Throw in the navy/airforce with all their specialists and I could see higher numbers. The army on the ground is seems far younger than 28. If not, then the differences in culture must be from something altogether more complicated.
  - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
    The National Guard and Army Reserve were deployed extensively in the Bush years. I can very readily see that 28 age (and you need a firmer definition of "combat" as well).
- chipsy 10y ago
  The "19" figure is mythical - just google "average age of soldiers in Vietnam" and you'll see that the real figures are known to be younger than other recent wars, just not so extreme - around 22-23 years old depending on the exact statistic you're working from. That said, the Paul Hardcastle song "19" is still pretty good. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM

analognoise 10y ago

This is why drones are insidious - anyone can press a button. You move from some percentage of born warriors, to 100% keyboard warriors.

venomsnake 10y ago
Armchair general here - from what I have heard drones take its toll on the "keyboard warriors" too. And I am not that sure that drone strikes are morally different from any point in history where one side had a uncontested technological superiority.
gozur88 10y ago
Drones are not "insidious" - war isn't supposed to be fair. Once you decide to go to war you try to achieve your objectives with the minimum loss of life among your own troops.
- analognoise 10y ago
  It lowers the bar to entry - it's the same way we used 'contractors' in Iraq and their deaths weren't reported along with our casualties. It detaches the public from the military movements, because they appear to be zero cost. Drones are the same.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    By that logic any effective weapon lowers the bar to entry. Should we equip our troops with bronze spears? Soldiers don't decide when the country goes to war; when we ask them to go we should provide the best equipment we can.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Drones do lower the cost of war and the barrier to entry, but they also make war a lot less like war and a lot more like policing. So the question is: why do we not we require an act of congress to do policing? How much 'stability' should our society require?

Nimitz14 10y ago

> They, however, experienced war not as something to endure but as something meaningful to them, something they wanted to engage in more than anything else. "One man looks at a dying bird, and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. That Death has got the final word; it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it."

richardjdare 10y ago

I am currently reading "The Glass Bees", Ernst Junger's scifi novel from 1957. It's about a former cavalryman fallen on hard times who goes for a shady job interview with a technology mogul. Its kind of an extended meditation on changing times and technology; the protagonist contrasting his military life with the high-tech world he is about to enter. The novel's tech mogul Zapparoni (described in Bruce Sterling's introduction as a cross between Walt Disney and Bill Gates) made his fortune making movies that you "entered like a garden" (This has to be one of the earliest references to video games in literature?) and manufactures tiny insect-like robots which work together "like a telephone exchange", performing such tasks as cleaning the pollen from the air. As Bruce Sterling notes, this sounds more like something from our own internet age than 50s scifi. I think its a remarkable book. Junger is an interesting personality. I can't figure him out or get close to him at all. I really want to read "Drogen und Rausch", his book about his drug experiences. What happens when a former WW1 stormtrooper takes LSD? Unfortunately there's no English translation.

theoh 10y ago
I've read some of "Storm of Steel", which definitely substantiates his reputation as a "military aesthete". The issue of how one might enter a movie "like a garden" is going to be a big one for VR. Narratology may have some models which can be applied: in particular the idea of deixis seems relevant. See Mary Galbraith's theory of deixis: https://www.academia.edu/1100316/Deictic_shift_theory_and_the_poetics_of_involvement_in_narrative https://www.academia.edu/1100316/Deictic_shift_theory_and_th... The idea of the Brocken spectre, an atmospheric phenomenon appearing to produce a huge, projected figure of the human observer, is also quite common in literature, sometimes as a metaphor for simply chasing one's own tail. It's thoroughly deictic and as such I think it's a good thing to keep in mind. How more than one player/viewer can be facilitated in the same world is an interesting area for research... I'd be interested to hear any current ideas from the game/hollywood world on that point! Also: "It is difficult to give an idea of the vast extent of modern mathematics. The word `extent' is not the right one; I mean extent crowded with beautiful detail-not an extent of mere uniformity such as an objectless plain, but of a tract of beautiful country seen at first in the distance, but which will bear to be rambled through and studied in every detail of hillside and valley, stream, rock, wood, and flower. But, as for every thing else, so for a mathematical theory-beauty can be perceived but not explained." (Arthur Cayley, 1883)

arca_vorago 10y ago

I'm very torn on this article and the positions it's author takes. I am a USMC combat vet of OIF, from a long line of warriors (all the way back to when we were Hessian mercenaries). I have been steeped in the ways of war, and even though I am a regular old sysadmin to most, it will always be a part of me, and me of it. So it confuses me when a Marine who has experienced as much as the author, including having been rewarded a Navy Cross for taking a bunker hill, says things like: "Born warriors are interested in war and fighting, not philosophy or politics." and "They don’t think or talk about whether war is moral. They don’t ponder why they are fighting for their country or whether their country was right to put them in battle. They don’t think about foreign policy—and they certainly don’t make it." I can see the point he is trying to make, but I disagree vehemently with these particular statements. For me, it was the realization that a true warrior not only does, but should... no, must take an active interest in politics, philosophy, foreign-policy, and the reasons behind the war they are engaged in. I would consider myself a born warrior, but I didn't go merc (modern term: contractor), or otherwise stay in the fight just to fight. Why? Because I realized, even from the very small picture a mcsf/infantry grunt, that there were lies in abundance being told to us, even to our CO's, in Iraq. I got out so that I could educate myself and I have spent the majority of my free time trying to understand the bigger geopolitical/geostrategic picture since then. Just within the last few years have I begun to even feel as if I had a grasp on these concepts enough to claim a modicum of understanding. Yes, I have known guys who seemed to excel in combat, who went contractor and have generally stayed involved in the action side of things, but, quite honestly, while I would love to have them by my side in the heat of a firefight, their failure to understand the bigger picture is part of the reason we failed so spectacularly in the middle east in the first place. When you have ground pounding knuckle-draggers, ready to destroy the enemy, but that aren't able to see a grander scheme, they become fodder, dispensable tools in a cause even they don't understand, and their lives are spent far too frivolously. Mr. Marlantes is correct that in the moment of battle we don't care about these things, because in that moment you just want to live, save your friends, and kill the enemy. It's the downtime when you should be preparing, recovering, thinking, studying, mentally and physically, for the next fight. This is why Mr. Marlantes fails to understand Jungers statement that, "There’s nothing worse for a soldier than boredom.” For the born warriors, often the boredom allows bad things to surface they would rather not face, rather not think, rather not contemplate. Battle is like eating an extremely hot pepper; if you eat more you delay the pain of taking that first breath. That's my theory why many of what the author calls "born warriors" hate downtime. (besides the normal reasons all servicemen/women hate downtime). It is for this reason that the ones most gifted in war but ungifted in larger thinking are to me, not the true "born warriors". Yes there is a certain adrenaline addiction that can occur, and a certain artistry to combat most don't understand, but I think that a warrior without philosophy isn't a warrior at all, but rather a tool. One that can be, and almost always is, misused and then discarded. For me it all boils down to the fact that we swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Full stop. The warriors Mr. Marlantes speaks of have done nothing of the sort, despite their gallantry in particular battle. We have allowed our true enemies, both foreign and domestic, to embroil us in foreign entanglements, abuse our military might, and through the permanent alliances our first president warned us about, undermined our national system of economic protectionism and our uniquely American philosophy of individualism. Personally, I think we are being set up as the fall guys so that the supranational oligarchy can finally put the last nail in the coffin of the American revolution and continue on with their plan of global government conveniently under their control. I also think the internet has been surprisingly effective in delaying this, which is why the internet is the next primary target of the oligarchs. With a surveillance engine the Stasi would have drooled over in place, the turn-key totalitarian system is in place, and now all it needs is the right dictator to turn it on. We need to stop knee-jerk warring, and strike at the root of the evil. The oligarchy. https://youtu.be/L-hkKmhssSU?t=69 https://youtu.be/L-hkKmhssSU?t=69

leroy_masochist 10y ago

Why is Karl Marlantes of all people reviewing one of the classics in the NY Review of Books this week? I feel like I'm missing some context like, "In this installment of Legends Reviewing Legends, Matterhorn author and NC recipient Karl Marlantes reviews the timeless classic 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger". By the way if you liked Storm of Steel check out Black Edelweiss or for that matter Blood and Steel. One of the things that truly throws my head for a loop is the extent to which the Prussian military culture has influenced so many organizations, both military and civilian, for both the good and the bad over more than a century.

arjie 10y ago
New Edition coming, with his foreword. It's at the bottom of the article. It's a publicity piece. And it worked. I'm going to buy it.

archeopterix 10y ago

I'm not very interested in demuring that war is a desirable thing. One man can profess all his love for the addiction of going into action, and write so many valentine's day cards about the thrill of testing his metal. To me it rings as hollow as a junkie's pining for dope. But it won't bury the aftermath, nor will it obviate the grind of the slower churn, when stalemate is intractable. The police state in between. The thought police of "patriotism," or rather jingoism. The miserable post-dictatorships and the corruption of the spoils. Those who flee their victories and armistices, to find the rush of more action elsewhere are cowards in their own way. Nevermind the wake of ashes behind them.

mpbm 10y ago

There's a philosophical point that always gets skipped over in these discussions. It's that there are TWO ways of doing good. The first is to create good things. The second is to destroy not-good things. Destruction is not inherently bad. Bad things are bad; destruction is just a means to a good or bad end. So, an artist who crafts a new torture device (means) in order to more creatively cause pain (ends) is bad. A soldier who crafts blitzkrieg (means) in order to bypass battles that aren't necessary to win the war (ends) is good. It's important to place these concepts into a consistent framework before discussing warfare. Marlantes doesn't state this framework explicitly, but he alludes to it throughout the piece with ideas like "Jünger sees the beauty—it’s everywhere in his memoir—and perhaps you will see it too. This doesn’t need to change how you judge war; coral snakes and tsunamis are beautiful too." The only part of the piece I don't get is "Jünger often uses such humor" referring to "gallows humor." I haven't read the book, but if Junger described everything in matter-of-fact terms, and really was Marlantes' "born warrier", then it's entirely possible he's not being funny and literally thought he was being "graced with an abundance of trench mortars." Kind of like how the narrator in Fight Club believes "you have to fight" but also explains that normal people do anything to avoid a fight (the only person he could get to swing at him was a priest after he messed with his bible). If you need fighting, then you need someone to fight with. That's why Tyler compares self improvement to masturbation. It's something you can do by yourself. Self destruction requires someone else because your lizard brain won't actually let you take yourself past the edge. You need someone else to push you. Also, for what it's worth, there's an important distinction between a solider and a warrior. A warrior is just a person who does an activity in a particular way. You can be a "jogging warrior" if you do it right. A soldier can only exist in a particular context. I'm not sure if Marlantes was contrasting the title "born soldier" against his own "born warrior" idea. A great illustration of the difference is in The Gates of Fire. It describes the Spartan's approach to soldiering and how it differs from their opponents approach to warrioring. For example, since their opponents were farmers and craftsmen, not soldiers, they had to get psyched up together in order to fight as a mob. So the Spartans would watch them gradually work themselves up and then start the fight at exactly the wrong moment, since as soldiers they didn't need to get excited to fight.

w23j 10y ago

This is a great interview by Tim Ferriss with Jocko Willink, who probably can be considered a "Born Soldier" in a similar vein: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/25/jocko-willink/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/25/jocko-willink/ The huge difference in perception from what is "usual" that the author of the linked article describes, struck me most when listening to it. Examples: Dying in battle -> That's the plan Battle of Ramadi -> Pinnacle of life By the way I am not judging this attitude either way. It's just interesting how different some people look at life.

ux-app 10y ago

this is war fetishism, pure and simple. For some, war is romantic and they like to ruminate over it. It's gross. Those that enjoy it are animals.

Normal_gaussian 10y ago
this is meat fetishism, pure and simple. For some, meat is romantic and they like to masticate it. It's gross. Those that enjoy it are murderers.
- ux-app 10y ago
  not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    I generally agreed, and enjoyed your structure. Any disagreement was with the last line which implied warmongers are even half as good as animals.