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This is a compelling long read. If the subject is of interest, the movie Restrepo and this talk from Sebastian Junger [1] may be of interest, too. [1] https://
by ISL 9y ago
This is a compelling long read. If the subject is of interest, the movie Restrepo and this talk from Sebastian Junger [1] may be of interest, too.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn0zEBhvwXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn0zEBhvwXY
- drak0n1c 9y agoStorm of Steel by Ernst Jünger is a WW1 classic that unabashedly explores the primal excitement of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_J%C3%BCnger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_J%C3%BCnger
- mmirate 9y ago> 42 American soldiers and many more Afghans were killed in the "Valley of Death" before it was finally abandoned, written off as more trouble than it was worth. Only 42 to get that nickname? After the World Wars happened? Wow. We've gotten soft in modern times.
- saagarjha 9y agoMore like, we’ve reduced the casualty rate in armed conflict? Plus, you’re forgetting about those who were killed that were not American.
- mmirate 9y agoThe nickname was American and a symbol of fear/dread, thus I presume it was a result of the American deaths, not the Afghan deaths.
- megaman22 9y agoThe entire butcher's bill from the War on Terror and the Iraq war for the US military, over a decade and a half, would be less than a quiet day during one of the offensives on the Western Front in WW1 or the Eastern in WW2.
- mariodiana 9y agoThe book, "War," from Sebastian Junger is well worth a read. I read it before seeing "Restrepo" (which I also recommend). On Goodreads, I wrote this about Junger's book and his take on men and war after finishing it: "[T]he experience of warfare seems to strike a chord deep within the psyche of the men in combat. The bonding among men, the heroism, the swinging extremes of victory won only by the palpable threat of mortal danger, the adrenaline rush and flood of endorphins during and after battle seem to be almost overwhelming to the human animal, eclipsing any larger moral considerations or even the rest of what we might call everyday life. To the men in the thick of the fight, it's an unrepeatable experience that they find themselves strangely missing years afterwards. What they miss doesn't minimize the horror of what they've experienced, and that's what they find so strange. In some respects once the shooting starts, the soldiers have all the justification they need to continue indefinitely. The immediacy of the experience provides satisfaction enough and requires no further rationale. In some ways it creates a microcosm of life and packs more than a lifetime's worth of living into its fleeting moments. How can life afterwards compare?"
- stevenmays 9y agoThe book Tribe was also good.
- Nzen 9y agoThis reminds me of the comments [0] on skydiving and depression from last month. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16840955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16840955 > I heard a interview with a vet and climber once who described the appeal of alpinism as "all of the good parts of combat, without the shooting or any conscious thing trying to cause me harm".
- ryanmarsh 9y agoHe was doing his best to self medicate. That’s him trying to convince himself the medicine is good. Nothing comes close to combat. Nothing. There’s such an ocean between the sickening frantic chaotic competition with Death and “oh shit if this rock slips I’m going to end up a paragraph on page two of the morning paper”. Plenty of us combat vets climb, and for the same reasons. Don’t be confused. Climbing can kill you like cigarettes, combat is like smoking crack while trying to land a jet on a carrier deck at night in a storm.