what is it good for?
May. 16th, 2010 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asimplechordDisorganized thoughts about Sebastian Junger's War:
My initial instinct is to compare to Generation Kill rather than The Perfect Storm, because it's another book by a journalist embedded with a company/platoon in combat.
The obvious differences: Army, not Marine. Holding an outpost, rather than invading a country. Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Far more internal and analytical than Generation Kill. Very different style in terms of writing. Junger doesn't fall in love as obviously as Wright did with his Marines, or but his affection is clearly communicated through his writing.
Story is not as connected to individuals (other than O'Byrne) as Wright's was to the Bravo Two-One Alpha humvee occupants. (For obvious reasons.)
Junger doesn't really romanticize the warrior ethos here, emphasizes that it's about working as a unit even if you hate some of your fellows, and about adrenaline and dopamine highs.
Weird shifts between present and past tense on the same page.
For me, the most interesting thing is the obvious difference in philosophy: desire for combat - boredom in its absence - in the Airborne soldiers vs. 1st Recon's feeling that getting into a firefight was a failure of mission - usually their job was to be undetected - and that not having a mission was the worst thing about the invasion.
Junger, the soldiers, and the officers all had a very clear understanding, strategically, of human terrain vs. geographical terrain, for all the good that it does. This was before some of the worst unmanned drone incidents, and before the US military acknowledged the role Pakistan was playing in the insurgency.
Something that bothers me about this book and about a lot of writing on Afghanistan and Iraq that is written for Western audiences is that there appears to be so little cultural understanding on the reporter/author's part, and the attitude comes across as almost imperial, trying to be benevolent and helpful like a stern parent, without realizing that the natives are not children looking for a new authority figure. IDK, it's like "our" POV and opinions are the only thing that's important, without cultural context. And that's pretty sad, since Junger's been covering Afghanistan off and on for a couple of decades, and I would've expected that he would not be ignorant of that context.
OK, I'm gonna read about some Amelia Peabody shenanigans for a while before I pry myself off the sofa and finish the weekend chores.
My initial instinct is to compare to Generation Kill rather than The Perfect Storm, because it's another book by a journalist embedded with a company/platoon in combat.
The obvious differences: Army, not Marine. Holding an outpost, rather than invading a country. Afghanistan, not Iraq.
Far more internal and analytical than Generation Kill. Very different style in terms of writing. Junger doesn't fall in love as obviously as Wright did with his Marines, or but his affection is clearly communicated through his writing.
Story is not as connected to individuals (other than O'Byrne) as Wright's was to the Bravo Two-One Alpha humvee occupants. (For obvious reasons.)
Junger doesn't really romanticize the warrior ethos here, emphasizes that it's about working as a unit even if you hate some of your fellows, and about adrenaline and dopamine highs.
Weird shifts between present and past tense on the same page.
For me, the most interesting thing is the obvious difference in philosophy: desire for combat - boredom in its absence - in the Airborne soldiers vs. 1st Recon's feeling that getting into a firefight was a failure of mission - usually their job was to be undetected - and that not having a mission was the worst thing about the invasion.
Junger, the soldiers, and the officers all had a very clear understanding, strategically, of human terrain vs. geographical terrain, for all the good that it does. This was before some of the worst unmanned drone incidents, and before the US military acknowledged the role Pakistan was playing in the insurgency.
Something that bothers me about this book and about a lot of writing on Afghanistan and Iraq that is written for Western audiences is that there appears to be so little cultural understanding on the reporter/author's part, and the attitude comes across as almost imperial, trying to be benevolent and helpful like a stern parent, without realizing that the natives are not children looking for a new authority figure. IDK, it's like "our" POV and opinions are the only thing that's important, without cultural context. And that's pretty sad, since Junger's been covering Afghanistan off and on for a couple of decades, and I would've expected that he would not be ignorant of that context.
OK, I'm gonna read about some Amelia Peabody shenanigans for a while before I pry myself off the sofa and finish the weekend chores.
