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"I'm pretty sick of these stories being what get headlines and pages of coverage about military members. ... No hit on the authors, they all seem to be genuinel

"I'm pretty sick of these stories being what get headlines and pages of coverage about military members. ... No hit on the authors, they all seem to be genuinely wanting to help/tell a compelling story - but I think it comes with some kind of fetish for war that they are trying to get in touch with." There is truth to what you say. The biggest issue I see, isn't the story so much trauma, trauma and war are hand maidens in history, it's how main-stream western society is shielded from the military. There is no common experience. Period. That's the bigger story. The author is C. J. Chivers, USMC (Capt. Retd.), so yeah, ^the fetish for war^ is strong. So strong, he had to quit for the sake of those around him. [0] [0] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a37838/end-of-war-1015/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a37838/end-of-war-1015/

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
main-stream western society is shielded from the military. There is no common experience. Period. That's the bigger story. We talk about this a lot and it's an odd topic. On the one hand it's great that western countries have the luxury of having so few impacts from wars that many don't even know that the US still has 8,400 military personnel in Afghanistan. On the other hand it makes the population really not give a shit about issues surrounding formal war or it's personal impacts, so they end up just letting politicians slide on stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > it makes the population really not give a shit about issues surrounding formal war Soldiers are between truck drivers and lawyers. More tactile than, and similarly skilled as, most of them. The luxury of the first world is the population's ability to ignore dying soldiers.
accountface 10y ago
Chivers surprised me. I set out to stereotype him as some gun fetishist and walked away from his book about the AK-47 with a full sense that small-arms proliferation is one of the worst things to happen in human history.
- wyager 10y ago
  That seems like a strange conclusion to reach. Humanity is per-capita less violent than ever, despite probably the highest per-capita small arms density in history. My suspicion is that the techniques available for individuals to kill each other has little impact on their proclivity to kill each other. Of course, that says nothing about the impact of increasingly effective large-scale weapons (nuclear/biological/chemical) on the proclivity of organizations like governments to kill people.
  - bootload 10y ago
    "Humanity is per-capita ^less violent^ than ever," Relative, like standing at the side of the road instead of in it. One reason I never talk about stuff like this is ppl who intellectualise rather than show any understanding of emotional response.
    - jungletek 10y ago
      When you're discussing facts and figures, emotional responses are irrelevant, if not distracting.
  - accountface 10y ago
    The major ongoing conflicts within The Middle East, Africa, and South America are as brutal as they are because of small arms and associated trade... specifically the communism-driven over-abundance of AK-47s
    - wyager 10y ago
      Why do you think they are any more brutal with AK-47s than they would be without small arms? We don't have a control group, but let's try to construct some comparisons. All of the regions you mention have a long and storied history of brutal conquest and warfare that predate the invention of small arms. This is evidence against small arms being a causal factor. The vast majority of the regime-caused deaths of the last hundred years are from starvation, not from combat. Again, evidence that small arms are not a prerequisite for mass suffering. The country with the highest small arms concentration in the world by a factor of 50% is the US, which is also one of the richest countries in the world by any metric. This is evidence against small arms proliferation being a sufficient condition for conflict. So while it's possible that small arms made the pre-existing conflicts in these regions worse, I don't see any strong evidence for it. If you take the Geneva perspective on things, it's a lot more humane to get shot than to e.g. die from an infected spear wound, so one can imagine how this modernization of warfare might even make it marginally less terrible. If you have any data that suggests that small arms definitively make these conflicts worse, I would like to hear it.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

main-stream western society is shielded from the military. There is no common experience. Period. That's the bigger story. We talk about this a lot and it's an odd topic. On the one hand it's great that western countries have the luxury of having so few impacts from wars that many don't even know that the US still has 8,400 military personnel in Afghanistan. On the other hand it makes the population really not give a shit about issues surrounding formal war or it's personal impacts, so they end up just letting politicians slide on stuff.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> it makes the population really not give a shit about issues surrounding formal war Soldiers are between truck drivers and lawyers. More tactile than, and similarly skilled as, most of them. The luxury of the first world is the population's ability to ignore dying soldiers.

accountface 10y ago

Chivers surprised me. I set out to stereotype him as some gun fetishist and walked away from his book about the AK-47 with a full sense that small-arms proliferation is one of the worst things to happen in human history.

wyager 10y ago
That seems like a strange conclusion to reach. Humanity is per-capita less violent than ever, despite probably the highest per-capita small arms density in history. My suspicion is that the techniques available for individuals to kill each other has little impact on their proclivity to kill each other. Of course, that says nothing about the impact of increasingly effective large-scale weapons (nuclear/biological/chemical) on the proclivity of organizations like governments to kill people.
- bootload 10y ago
  "Humanity is per-capita ^less violent^ than ever," Relative, like standing at the side of the road instead of in it. One reason I never talk about stuff like this is ppl who intellectualise rather than show any understanding of emotional response.
  - jungletek 10y ago
    When you're discussing facts and figures, emotional responses are irrelevant, if not distracting.
- accountface 10y ago
  The major ongoing conflicts within The Middle East, Africa, and South America are as brutal as they are because of small arms and associated trade... specifically the communism-driven over-abundance of AK-47s
  - wyager 10y ago
    Why do you think they are any more brutal with AK-47s than they would be without small arms? We don't have a control group, but let's try to construct some comparisons. All of the regions you mention have a long and storied history of brutal conquest and warfare that predate the invention of small arms. This is evidence against small arms being a causal factor. The vast majority of the regime-caused deaths of the last hundred years are from starvation, not from combat. Again, evidence that small arms are not a prerequisite for mass suffering. The country with the highest small arms concentration in the world by a factor of 50% is the US, which is also one of the richest countries in the world by any metric. This is evidence against small arms proliferation being a sufficient condition for conflict. So while it's possible that small arms made the pre-existing conflicts in these regions worse, I don't see any strong evidence for it. If you take the Geneva perspective on things, it's a lot more humane to get shot than to e.g. die from an infected spear wound, so one can imagine how this modernization of warfare might even make it marginally less terrible. If you have any data that suggests that small arms definitively make these conflicts worse, I would like to hear it.