{"id":19727,"date":"2010-07-14T04:07:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T08:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=19727"},"modified":"2010-07-14T04:07:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T08:07:30","slug":"huffpo-poster-claims-to-know-more-about-war-than-people-who-have-actually-been-in-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=19727","title":{"rendered":"HuffPo Poster Claims To Know More About War Than People Who Have Actually Been In One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Turse over at the Huffington Post knows a lot about war, even though he has never been in one. He knows so much in fact that he can tell people like Sebastain Junger who has actually in been in a war that they don’t know what they are really talking about<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Turse has a lot of issues with Junger, which really boil down to the fact that Junger didn’t make an anti-war film (It should be pointed out that Turse wrote a book about why we should withdraw from Afghanistan). More below the fold…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, here is Nick Turse’s bio from HuffPo:<\/p>\n

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of\u00a0TomDispatch.com<\/a>. His work has appeared in many publications, including the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>, the\u00a0Nation<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0In These Times<\/em>, and regularly at TomDispatch. His first book,\u00a0The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives<\/a>, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website isNickTurse.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just so you get the idea about where this guy is coming from.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening line of the article:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never heard a shot fired in anger.\u00a0 But I might know a little bit more about war than\u00a0Sebastian Junger<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? Lets sum this up. Nick Turse: <\/strong>No time in combat. Sebastain Junger: <\/strong>Covered the war in Kosovo, reported on the Northern Alliance before 9\/11, covered multiple African conflicts, and was embedded with an Army infantry platoon in the worst place in the world for five months. Hmmm its a close call but I think I am going to go out on a limb and say Junger knows a little more about war than Turse.<\/p>\n

Junger and Hetherington may know something about Afghanistan, a good deal about combat, and even more about modern American troops, but there\u2019s precious little evidence in\u00a0Restrepo <\/em>that — despite the title of Junger\u2019s book — they know the true face of war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Turse really means is that they don’t share his point of view and didn’t make a completely bias anti-war film.<\/p>\n

Turse then goes on to discuss a book review Junger did of a book about Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Matterhorn<\/em> touches on none of this.\u00a0 Marlantes focuses tightly on a small unit of Americans in a remote location surrounded by armed enemy troops — an episode that, while pitch perfect in depiction, represents only a sliver of a fraction of the conflict that was the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that this view of war appealed to Junger.\u00a0 In\u00a0Restrepo<\/em>, it\u2019s his vision of war, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet again, Junger doesn’t see the “bigger picture” (which is Turse’s view of history) so Junger doesn’t know what he is talking. You see the brillant logic here?<\/p>\n

Few Americans born after the Civil War know much about war.\u00a0 Real war.\u00a0 War that seeks you out.\u00a0 War that arrives on your doorstep — not once in a blue moon, but once a month or a week or a day.\u00a0 The ever-present fear that just when you\u2019re at the furthest point in your fields, just when you\u2019re most exposed, most alone, most vulnerable, it will come roaring into your world.<\/p>\n

Those Americans who have gone to war since the 1870s — soldiers or civilians — have been mostly combat tourists<\/strong>, even those who spent many tours under arms or with pen (or computer) in hand reporting from war zones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, the Marines on Iwo Jima were just looking to take a really cool picture on top of a mountain. The guys at Normandy were just trying to get to EuroDisney. The Rangers in Somalia were there for the surfing. I went to Iraq for seven months just to work on my tan and see the sites in Ninawa and Anbar province. No, seriously….<\/p>\n

Turse pretty much goes on a rant about Vietnam, the military, drones and every other leftist complaint about the military. He closes with this:<\/p>\n

If Americans care only sparingly for their paid, professional soldiers — the ones A.O. Scott says deserve 90 minutes of our time — they care even less about Afghan civilians.\u00a0 That\u2019s why they don\u2019t understand war.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why they\u2019ll think that the essence of war is what they\u2019re seeing as they sit in the dark and watch\u00a0Restrepo<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I suppose that is why the United States is investing billions in bolstering Afghan infrastructure and has implemented the most restrictive ROEs in the history of warfare.. because we don’t care about the Afghan people. Right.<\/p>\n

Fire away folks….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Turse over at the Huffington Post knows a lot about war, even though he has … HuffPo Poster Claims To Know More About War Than People Who Have Actually Been In One<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,47,6,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-liberals-suck","category-media","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}