What I’m reading

I’ve been on some kind of high-amplitude ride all day since the bomb went off, peaks where I can’t sit still and valleys that make me want to catch the next resupply out of here. Not because I’m scared but because I’m used to war being exciting and suddenly it’s not. Suddenly it seems weak and sad, a collective moral failure that has tricked me—tricked us all—into falling for the sheer drama of it. Young men in their terrible new roles with their terrible new machinery arrayed against equally strong young men on the other side of the valley, all dedicated to a kind of canceling out of each other until replacements arrive. Then it starts all over again. There’s so much human energy involved—so much courage, so much honor, so much blood—you could easily go a year here without questioning whether any of this needs to be happening in the first place. Nothing could convince this many people to work this hard at something that wasn’t necessary—right?–you’d catch yourself thinking.

That’s from War, by writer Sebastian Junger (who also reported from Liberia). He embedded himself with the military in one of the most dangerous posts in Afghanistan, and then wrote a book about it. It’s gripping. His writing is insightful and honest and empathetic; I think this is as close as any non-military person can ever come to understanding what it’s like to be an American fighting in Afghanistan.