Junger and War

Sebastian Junger is on tour promoting his book "War." The book is the written account of the months he spent with an American infantry unit in the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan; this experience also appeared as a feature length documentary called "Restrepo." The valley is ten kilometers by six and the source of twenty percent of all the combat in all of Afghanistan. The savagery, the danger, the suffering and discomfort is episodic but astonishingly frequent; sometimes there are fifteen firefights a day.

This is a violent story about violent men. But Junger's talk was not on the specifics of his book but rather the general idea of war, its origins and qualities. He is a better writer than a speaker but he was heartfelt, reflective and deeply involved. It is likely that a speech like this could not be given on a campus or in New York because he sees war as a fact of life. Indeed, he accepts war as more than inevitable; it is the outgrowth of some of our better qualities. To paraphrase the words of countless interviews, "The experience of war is something I hate but I would not trade."

In Junger's view, the warrior is virtually free of philosophy; he is, on the other hand, completely devoted to his fellows regardless of their circumstances. War is a tribal event writ large that is fueled by brotherhood and compassion, two of man's greatest qualities. These two elements drive the warrior in war and befuddle him in peacetime. The returning warrior consistently is confused by what he sees in peace as trivial, the lack of import. Against the backdrop of war, peacetime decisions are silly, random and essentially meaningless. It is not adrenaline he seeks, it is meaning, the same meaning and the same intensity that he experiences in his tribal unit. (Junger's academic background is anthropology.)

Junger is searching for a middle ground, the territory where the tribe can be expanded to include the enemy's better heart because he knows that both sides of the battlefield have it. It is brotherhood and compassion that stokes the fire of war; there seems to him to be no reason that it cannot be used as a bridge to fuel peace. The denial of tribes, their inherent threat but great humanness, will never allow us to harness it. (An interesting example he gives is the American legislative system which has boiled down to tribal antagonism that, if unchecked, could be very destructive.)

But Junger's experiences were incomplete. Last year his friend and fellow journalist, Tim Heatherington, was killed by a mortar shell on an assignment Junger was to share with him. Junger was devastated. A friend called and said of all the things he had learned about war, this was the missing piece: "The horror of war is not the risk that you will die, it is the certainty that some of your friends will." He says he will not return to battle again.

Many soldiers returning from combat experience with what is called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder where depression and estrangement dominate them. But other experience the opposite, called Post-traumatic Growth, where sensations, experiences and appreciation of life are heightened. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. Listening to Junger, as he searches aloud, stirs the memory. Finally, one begins to remember: "reaffirmation of the will to live in the face of death, and the joy of its inexhaustibility when so reaffirmed"--that is Nietzsche's immortal definition of tragedy. Tragedy, "with its strange power to present suffering and death in such away as to exalt." And this occurs in Aeschylus' plays as in those of no other tragic poet.

Aeschylus, the inventor of tragedy, a great warrior who survived a great war.