War

Comment by Sebastian Junger on June 15, 2010 at 12:08am

Those are hard questions. the costs of staying are obviouisly more casualties. the costs of leaving are chaos and bloodshed in afghanistan and possibly continued attacks in the US and Europe. I don't know which is worse - but those do seem to be the choices.

Comment by Gregg on July 14, 2010 at 9:32pm

Hi Carlos,
Please let me make an observation about the Valley and why we should stay there until it is time to go. You stated: "is this war worthy considereing as I understand the only reason we are in Afganistan is to stop Alqueida to have bases there and in the process we are fighting the Taliban,I know the Taliban are bad people that do not even respect their women; so my question continues is it worthy that American soldiers be killed fighting the Afaganistan Taliban ?" I would say that is a question few of us could anwer with any degree of clarity. We ar there as the government in its wisdom (some would say or lack of wisdom) decided that was a good place tobe for wahtever reason. It is very good that there is no oil there or the nay sayers would start that old tired argument that we are there for it. In the end to me it does not matter why the soldiers are there as it did not matter to me why i was sitting on top of mountains in Vietnam and had to leave for no apparent reason. But as i said before, as the old saying goes, "It isnt ours to reason why, it is ours to do or die". So for me to hear that question to Sebastian just reinforces that the non military people do not understand why soldiers do what they do and why. Yes the Taliban does not respect its women but that is true of most of Muslims i have met over the years. Women are chattal and cow to be used and thrown away when the time is right. Saying "idicorce you" three times in a row is a divorce in the Muslim religion. you will notice no one ever goes after the men when a woman is stoned to death for adultary(?). But that is another story. Wherevere an American soldier or any soldier we are working with is has to be a worth cause even if we do not know why or understand it. to say it is not worthy denigrates the soldiers that have fought and died and the ones that have fought and lived through it all. I have said it before and i say it again that Sebastian is doing the civilized world a great service by showing what the soldiers go through so we can sleep at night and have a good decent life unlike so many millions in other parts of the world. so i salute him again and his balls the size of grapefruits in doing this. I have seen more people say what a joke Sebastian is but i do not ever recal seeign anything bad about Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent in WW2 who covered the war there. I am going to insert a list of war correspondents from long ago to modern day and you look at the list and see who you have heard and tell me any of them that have caught the shit Sebastain has done to bring the world how soldiers live in combat and the horrors of the rebel war in sierra leone. Here is the list and I have had the honor to meet several of them and it is my honor to know Sebastian as a friend and one i would have with me if i had to go somewhere tough.
War Correspondants courtesy of Wikipedia. you will notice Sebastian is not on the list but he is just as worthy as any of them and far worthier than lying , "Chicken Little "Al Gore!.
20th century
•Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881–1931); covered the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.
•Alexandra Boulat
•Margaret Bourke-White (1904 – 1971); first female war correspondant, photographed Buchenwald concentration camp
•Mary Marvin Breckinridge (1905–2002); covered World War II.
•Wilfred Burchett (1911–1983); covered the Pacific War, Korean War and Vietnam War. He was known for covering news from the "other side" of the battlefield, and was often criticised of being a communist sympathiser.
•Larry Burrows
•Robert Capa (1913–1954); covered the Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, the European Theatre of World War II and the First Indochina War (where he was killed by a landmine).
•Dickey Chapelle (1918–1965); covered the Pacific War, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Vietnam War (where she was killed by a landmine). She was the first female US war correspondent to be killed in action.
•Basil Clarke (1879–1947); covered the fighting on the Western Front during WWI.
•Alexander Clifford, covered World War II
•Burton Crane (1901–1963); covered occupied Japan after World War II and the Korean War for the New York Times.
•Neil Davis - Australian combat cameraman covered the Vietnam War, Cambodia and Laos and subsequently conflicts in Africa.
•Luc Delahaye
•Richard Dimbleby (1913–1965); covered World War II
•David Douglas Duncan
•Kurt Eggers (-1943) World War II SS correspondent, editor of the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps, was killed while reporting on the Wiking's battles near Kharkov. The German SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers was named in his honor.
•Gloria Emerson (1929–2004); covered the Vietnam War.
•Bernard B. Fall (1926–1967); covered the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War (where he was killed by a landmine).
•J.C. Furnas; covered World War II.
•Joseph L. Galloway (born November 13, 1941), UPI correspondent in Vietnam and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young.
•Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998); covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Vietnam War, the Six-Day War and even the U.S. invasion of Panama.
•Georgie Anne Geyer (born 1935); covered the Guatemalan Civil War and the Algerian Civil War.
•George Sessions Perry (1910–1956) Covered WWII for Harper's Weekly and Saturday Evening Post. He accompanied troops on the invasions of Italy and France. Said after the war that his war experiences "de-fictionalized" him for life, and he never wrote fiction again.
•Al Gore (born 1948); covered the Vietnam War.
•Henry Tilton Gorrell (1911–1958); United Press correspondent. Covered the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Author of "Soldier of the Press, Covering the Front in Europe and North Africa, 1936-1943" published by the University of Missouri Press, 2009. [1]
•Cork Graham (born 1964); imprisoned in Vietnam for illegally entering the country while looking for treasure buried by Captain Kidd.
•Louis Grondijs (1878–1961); covered Russo-Japanese War, World War I, the Russian Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Spanish Civil War.
•Corra Harris early women correspondent in World War I.
•David Halberstam
•Macdonald Hastings
•Max Hastings
•Ron Haviv
•Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961); covered the Spanish Civil War
•Michael Herr
•Marguerite Higgins; paved the way for female war correspondents.
•Clare Hollingworth covered World War II, Algerian War, Vietnam War
•Philip Jones Griffiths
•Gary Knight
•Larry LeSueur, CBS radio correspondent, reported from rooftops during World War II London blitzes, went ashore in the first waves of the D-Day invasion, and broadcast to America the Allied liberation of Paris.
•Jim G. Lucas, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, reported human interest stories from the front lines in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
•Anne O'Hare McCormick
•Don McCullin
•Alan Moorehead, covered World War II
•Christopher Morris
•Ralph Morse, (born 1917) covered World War II
•Edward R. Murrow
•James Nachtwey
•Roy Pinney (born 1911) covered WWII and was present at the Normandy landing on D-Day for the Normandy Invasion. He also covered the Yom Kippur War in the Gaza Strip and conflicts in Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Colombia. Among the approximately 500 war correspondents covering the Normandy Invasion, Roy Pinney is the oldest living survivor. Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame is also among the oldest survivors.
•Ernie Pyle
•Yvonne Ridley
•Joe Rosenthal, received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
•John Sack
•Sydney Schanberg, his experiences in Cambodia during the Vietnam War are dramatized in The Killing Fields
•Sigrid Schultz
•William L. Shirer
•Richard Tregaskis, author of Guadalcanal Diary, dramatized in movie of same name.
•Eric Lloyd Williams
•Chester Wilmot
•Sylvana Foa, correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia

21st century
•Richard Engel; covered the Iraq War and the 2006 Lebanon War.
•Lara Logan
•Kevin Sites

•General
•Kate Adie (born 1945); covered the Gulf War, Yugoslav Wars, Rwandan Genocide and the Sierra Leone Civil War.
•Christiane Amanpour (born 1958); covered the Gulf War and the Bosnian War.
•Peter Arnett (born 1934); covered the Vietnam War, 1991 Gulf War, the 2001 Invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq War.
•Martin Bell (born 1938); covered the Vietnam War, Biafra War, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Angolan Civil War and the Bosnian War.
•Mile Cărpenişan (born August 23, 1975 – died March 22, 2010) covered the Iraq war and Kosovo war
•Peter Cave (born 1952); covered the Gulf War, Yugoslav Wars, the Coconut War in the New Hebrides , Iraq War, Tiananmen Square
•Winston Churchill (1874–1965); covered the Siege of Malakand, the Mahdist War and the Second Boer War.
•Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916); covered the Spanish-American War, Second Boer War and the fighting on the Macedonian front during World War I.
•Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905); covered the First Boer War[3]
•Anderson Cooper, at age of 42, a renowned War correspondent serving CNN.
•Roy Pinney (born 1911) covered WWII and was present at the Normandy landing on D-Day for the Normandy Invasion. He also covered the Yom Kippur War in the Gaza Strip and conflicts in Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Colombia. Among the approximately 500 war correspondents covering the Normandy Invasion Roy Pinney is the oldest living survivor. Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame is also among the oldest survivors.
•Robert Fisk (born 1946); covered the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, Iran–Iraq War, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Algerian Civil War, Kosovo War and the 2003 Iraq War.
•Peggy Hull (1889–1967) covered Mexican-American War, World War I and World War II
•Ryszard Kapuściński
•Helen Kirkpatrick (1909–1997) covered World War II including The Blitz, Normandy Invasion and Liberation of France.
•George Lewis NBC News Vietnam War which determined the american ruling over the world while somalians are kicking each other in bAlls 1970-1973
•Terry Lloyd
•Anthony Loyd
•Karen Maron
•Waldemar Milewicz
•Kenji Nagai
•Arturo Pérez-Reverte, worked for Pueblo newspaper and Spanish TVE. Covered the Bosnian War among others.
•Robert Young Pelton Best known for his 1000+ page guide to warzones and survival, The World's Most Dangerous Places.
•John Pilger
•Dan Rather
•Anna Politkovskaya
•Joe Sacco comics artist who covered the Gulf War and Bosnian War
•Morley Safer
•Kurt Schork
•Sylvester "Harry" Scovell influential yellow journalist in Spanish-American War
•Giuliana Sgrena
•John Simpson
•Daniel Smith
•Michael Ware (born 1969); ongoing coverage of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Reporting from the perspectives of all combatant groups.
•Trevor Watson (born 1953, Sydney, Australia) the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Cambodia, military rebellion in Fiji, Tiananmen Square
•Kate Webb
•Rod Williams Hall of Fame broadcaster covered Vietnam War[4]
•Michael Yon (born 1964); Former Green Beret, turned journalist and author. Embedded with American, British and Lithuanian combat units in Iraq War and Afghanistan War.
•Jacques Leslie, Vietnam War correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, 1974–1977

For what is is worth, I do not agree with you on your idea that is is a good idea to tell the taliban when we are pulling out of afghanistan. I do nto agree with anything he says for that matter but on war why would you tell the enemy what you are planning? total stupidity but what can you expect from someone that has no military experince and has all those ass kissing cabinet members around him who seem to have lost their love of the US and common sense.

So that is it for this post. All of you sleeping can wake up now and go do something constructive. Sebastian is doing a service to the American people and is doing it correctly. I do think in the book he did not have to go into the psychological aspects as much as he did. I am sure he analyzed the soldiers far more than they analyze themselves. War is hello and you cannot tell anyone about it correctly unless they have been in it. Remember when Siddartha met the Buddha of he time after listening to him give a sermon? He the had a meeting with Buddha and told him he liked the sermon but that he found a large flaw in his thinking. He said that you can tell people about an event such as Enlightenment (in their case) but until they EXPERIENCE iot for themselves it really means nothing but a good story. Sebastain is doing what he can to explain to all of you about war and how the soldiers get trhough it but until you are in a fox hole with some fuck trying to blow your head off and you trying to blow his off first, you will never truly understand what Sebastian is saying. But is trying to show you and that is what matters as it gives you a different perspective on war. It is not a video game and people bleed and die and do not get up and dust themselves off and do it again. It is for real and there are real things to consider and to me that is what Sebastian is converying to people as best he can.
Sebastian is a friend of mine from many years ago and i said earlier i would take him with me if i had to go anywhere, and i would. not for the combat aspect of what i would be doing but from the aspect of his sense of duty to the mission, as it were and his insight and calm attitude. He may keep me from making a mistake that could be a serious problem for us. But let me say as well if he wanted an old man of 63 to go with him anywhere i would and just hope and pray it was not up and down those mountains in Afghanistan!!
Keep up the good work Sebastian and let others follow your footsteps. You have put you time in Hell and it is time to relax.
Gregg

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