Well, you take what you want from the article, but it does not in fact say (or imply, to me) that people don't join looking for this experience. People do go lo

Well, you take what you want from the article, but it does not in fact say (or imply, to me) that people don't join looking for this experience. People do go looking for this experience specifically. I'm telling you this is the case because it's one of the reasons I joined personally. My best friend joined for similar reasons -- incidentally, there is only one person I consider a close friend who was never in combat, and he spent time in prison (it's no coincidence the old Stoics have been popular among soldiers and prisoners). One of the main reasons I joined was specifically for the chance to experience combat, even though before 9/11, it wasn't a very big one. People have different names for this ("kill terrorists" and "kick some ass" are pretty common), but it's what pretty much everybody joins the infantry for. Now, what people find when they get off the plane could be anything. It's hard to quantify this complex experience even with the many varied perspectives shared by people who were right there with you. So you're going to have to understand that while the article is broadly true, nobody has perfect insight into what this experience is all about, myself included (perhaps especially me). Nobody in history has ever known all there is to know about war, just as nobody in history has ever known all there is to know about love. It's no different here, even if he's exposed a universal truth of combat. Exposed the kind of open secret that war fulfills a basic male impulse. Either way, you replied to a comment in a thread about the innate human capacity for war and the danger of people denying or not recognizing that capacity, so that's why I'm talking about it here.