Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,
episode number 170.
In one of the ever expanding parts of
historical and cultural understanding of war,
part and parcel of the legacy of World War I
down to our time currently, is the idea
among civilians who have never been to
war who romanticize the act of killing people and
breaking things. They look at war
as a furnace in which the dross of
complicated and uncomfortable human emotions
are burned off, and a
furnace in which or from which emerges
a mechanical, hard
man who can do the acts of killing and
breaking things that a civilian themselves cannot
do. In our modern time,
in our post modern American moment,
where the percentage of the available male population who
actively serves in the Military is at
0.8% or less than 1% of the available
male population, the understanding of what
exactly goes into making war and the
psychology of the actual soldier
himself, and yes, in some cases herself,
the understanding of that has been lost in a haze
of mythology, massive cultural inexperience,
biased media reports, and of course,
institutional, political and cultural
biases. What is
understood even less is
why the men who do go and serve in the US
Military fight in the first place. It is
incredibly difficult for the vast majority of the population in the United States to understand
at a visceral and emotional level the impetus that
leads young men to go fight and die in places that are hard
to find on a world map and that seem to be meaningless in
the larger scheme of living daily life in a
complex, postmodern, wealthy and incredibly comfortable
society like the United States of America.
What exactly are the young men and sorry ladies,
my apologies. It is still, even in these times of relentless
insistence upon gender egalitarianism in every
facet of life, mostly young men
fighting for. A better question might
be who are these young men who serve fighting for?
And what can civilians take as lessons from that
level of visceral commitment and apply to their non
combatant lives, draped, as I already
said, or drowned, depending upon your perspective, in
comfort, wealth and the most productivity
out of any human civilization in the history of humanity
today, on this episode of the podcast we will try. We will
attempt to extract multiple themes that may
potentially provide a pathway to an answer to
some of these questions, particularly these
questions that arise from our critical, skeptical
postmodern minds. And we will
be using the book today War
by Sebastian Younger
leaders dedication to filling and
fulfilling promises with honor even to the point of
death, cannot just be a marketing
position with no actual meaning and
sacrifice in the real world.
So as we open War by Sebastian
Younger, going to point out a couple of different things
in this episode today. So as usual with
copyrighted works, particularly copyrighted works that are, were
that are, that are not in the public domain
as war is not, we do not read directly or
we read minimally directly from the book. If we read it all
instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to summarize the book and point
out what I think are some key themes in the content
for you to pay attention to when you pick it up and,
and read it. The other thing that I would recommend in
looking at War and in reading it in
is thinking about sort of the context in which it was
written and the time frame in which it was written. So when you
open it up, there's multiple different versions, but
this first paperback edition was published in 2011 by
Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers out of
London. Obviously the material is copyrighted to Sebastian
Younger. And the version that I have
when you open it up has a table of contents and then it has a
map. You turn the page and it has a map of the locations that are
referenced in the material in the Korengal Valley.
So Camp Blessing, Firebase Michigan.
Let's see the Korengal Outpost, Firebase Phoenix,
OP Restrepo, the location of a,
of an IED attack now near Firebase
Vegas, which you'll find out more about that in the book
Hill 1706. And like I said, Op
Restrepo. By the way, I'm going to put this out there early. If
you get the movie or you go see the movie Restrepo,
that is a companion to this book. So
this book is a reporting, not a reporting. It is the reporting
on the war. In the war, the battle in
Afghanistan for, for the Karangal Valley that was
conducted by Sebastian Younger, who
at the time was writing for Vanity Fair and was an embedded
journalist with the 2nd Battalion in,
in Afghanistan. And he along with his,
along with his, his photographer
Tim Harrington reported
as a result of their five trips to the Korengal Valley
between June 2007 and June 2008 again for
vanity Fair magazine. That feature length
documentary that they produced is called Restrepo. And Tim Harrington
is no longer alive. He actually died in an Believers either an
IED attack. I think it was an ID attack if I remember
correctly, in Syria, reporting on the Syrian civil war
many years later, which of course was a knock on effect
from our efforts in Iraq.
So the book is set up in the table of contents,
is set up into three, three parts, right? So you have book one,
Fear, book two, Killing, and book three, Love.
And you begin to see as you read each one of these books what the
themes are that, that,
that Sebastian Younger is able to pull
from the interactions he has with the
men of 2nd Platoon.
It's also interesting to note that
he does not talk about politics in this
book. One of the points that he makes is, is that
it's, and it's, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of a
good point actually. He
says that, oh gosh, it's early in
the, in the first book in Fear, when he talks about
kind of who the men are, he talks about, you know,
o' Byrne and the rest of the men of Battle Company. He
talks about the Chinooks and the Apaches,
the, the, the background
of, not that background, but the, the folks of the
10th Mountain Division who were in that part of Afghanistan
before, before 2nd Battalion showed up.
And of course he talks about the Taliban there.
One of the points that he makes is that,
huh, politics
don't matter when the bullets start flying.
And that's a huge point right away or huge theme right away
that comes out right away initially in book one, Fear and
runs like a, like a, like a thread
throughout the entire remainder of this book,
by the way. It's also set up as a classic reportage kind
of document, kind of on the line of what Joan
Didion would have, would have done or Hunter
S. Thompson if he still been alive
and interested in doing something like this.
Restrepo is definitely a great film. I recommend Going and Getting It. There's also
another film called Korengal which was also made
for or produced from the documentary footage that Tim Harrington
shot along with Sebastian Younger. And I would
strongly recommend picking up this book, examining its themes
and looking at it closely, which we'll start doing
right now. But before we jump into the,
the themes that are in war, I want to talk a little
bit about the author. So Sebastian younger was
born January 17, 1962
and though he had a near death experience recently, is still very much, very
much alive. He is an American journalist,
author and filmmaker who has reported in the field
on dirty, dangerous and demanding occupations and of course
the experience of infantry combat. By the
way, his other books which are listed in the Front of War, just want to
point those out to you are the
Perfect Storm, which was turned into a, which was turned into a movie,
A Death in Belmont and Fire
and again, he is part of that, that long line of
reporters turned Authors that winds all the way
back in our history to Ernest
Hemingway really was probably the most most famous
author turned reporter. Actually reporter turned author turned back
to reporter. But this idea of being a
writer and doing dirty, dangerous and demanding occupations and reporting
on the results of dirty, dangerous and demanding
occupations and going directly into those experiences and
embedding yourself directly into those experiences has a long
journalistic and authorial history in the
United States. And Sebastian Younger is just one more person
inside of that legacy. Younger's works,
which makes him unique to our time, explore themes
such as brotherhood, trauma and, and the relationship of the individual to
society as told from the far reaches of human
experience. Younger graduated from Concord
Academy in 1980 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Wesleyan University and cultural anthropology in 1984.
As an accomplished long distance runner, he spent summer training on the
Navajo Nation reservation and wrote his thesis on Navajo long
distance running and its traditional pre Columbian roots. By the way, he
does talk about his running background in the book War.
He also references it in interviews that you
hear about him later on. And he does actually say in the book, you
know, the running and the ability to
tolerate a lot of pain for a long distance
helped him in the, in the Korengal Valley where,
you know, he didn't want to be a burden on the, on
the troops. And at the end of the day, you know,
you have to be able to keep up. And we're only as
strong in a group of soldiers. We're only as strong
as our weakest point. And if the journalist is the weakest point,
then that's where the enemy will strike. And so
Younger fell back on that, that long distance
running and was able to run with a pack, was able
to commit to or not run, but hike with a
pack and was able to hike 60 miles and I'm not, sorry, sorry,
not 60 miles, was able to hike up the sides of mountains
with a 60 pound pack as well as
his cameraman, you know, bringing his cameraman's gear along as
well in order to film what was happening in the Korengal
Valley and to keep up with those soldiers who were also, by the way, at
the time of the writing of the articles in Vanity Fair that would
eventually become the book War, the Time of the Writing.
Most of Those guys were 20 years younger than him.
So, you know, this is, this is not an easy,
not an easy task. And I could tell
you as a person who's in my mid-40s, trying to keep up with folks who
are 20 years younger than me and, and I Don't have a background in long
distance running is always a challenge.
While much of Younger's writing is subjective and participatory,
he strives to maintain a neutral point of view and avoids contemporary
political discussion, especially around frequent subjects
that haunt his journalistic peers, like economic
inequality, diversity and social justice,
and of course, war.
In 2021, when
he was interviewed, he cited his quote, unquote favorite quote
in an interview with the Guardian. And I love this quote. And it goes
directly to the mindset of a man like Sebastian
Younger, a reporter like Sebastian Younger, a writer like
Sebastian Younger. And I quote,
journalists don't tell people what to think.
They tell them what to think
about. So when we look at
the book War, and when we look at particularly the
first book or the first part of War,
which is entitled Fear,
we open up and we start with that chapter and
there's a. An opening description of exactly
what we are getting into in the. In the
Korengal Valley. In the spring of
2007 in Afghanistan,
we. We meet a character named. A character, a
soldier named o'. Byrne. And
Younger begins to walk us through what it actually means to be a
member of Battle Company. O' Byrne grew up in
rural Pennsylvania, and he played
army for many years as a kid.
Um, and you know, he got in trouble at school, he started
fighting at home. When he became a teenager, um,
you know, you know, O'
Byrne's father shot him twice with a.22 rifle.
And of course, instead of going to jail,
he went to reform school for assault rather than his father going to
prison for attempted murder. And that was when O' Byrne was 16.
Later on, O' Byrne met a National Guard recruiter who talked him
into signing up and
transferred him from the National Guard into the. Into the. Or he
transferred himself from the National Guard into the regular Army. O' Byrne is a
linchpin character in
this entire book. He becomes. You see him grow
in leadership of the men of the.
Of the 173rd Airborne and of course, the men
of the 2nd Battalion.
Then we get introduced to the Korengal Valley and the Coral Valley.
I love this line. And we'll revisit this idea later on in
our. In our main. Our main episode that will focus on
this book with, with John Hill, AKA Small Mountain.
But this idea, I love this idea that the Korengal Valley is,
Is too remote to conquer, the too poor to intimidate, and too
autonomous to buy off. Everybody now knows about
the history of the, the history of
Afghanistan, right? And we'll talk a little Bit about that later on in
the. In the next section here. But this part of
Afghanistan is so remote that the Soviets didn't even get
to the mouth of the valley or didn't make it past the mouth of the
valley when they invaded in the 80s and the Taliban didn't dare go in
there at all. Only the Americans were stupid enough to go, or
brave enough, depending upon your perspective, to go into the
Korengal Valley. Then we continue to meet the other
men of 2nd Platoon, including 2nd Platoon Sergeant, a career
soldier named Mark Patterson, who was 30, a full
12 years older than the youngest man in 2nd
Platoon. And then we meet
Sebastian Younger and we talk about his arrival into the platoon and
how he was integrated into their group.
And then, of course, the fighting starts and the bullets start
flying, the patrols start exiting Firebase
Phoenix and they begin engaging the
enemy. During the summer of
2007, by the way, a summer
where it is 100 degrees every day and
tarantulas invade the living quarters of the American
soldiers and presumably the Taliban fighters as well.
But the American soldiers, to get out of the heat.
There's also a time when they're carrying so much gear and
they are fighting so hard that the smell of
their sweat is the smell of ammonia, because
they're actually breaking down muscle rather
than just straight sweat.
This first part, this first book, Fear,
sets up what's going to happen in books two
and three, Killing and Love.
And it gives you an idea of exactly
what, what it is that you're getting into when
you go into war in
Afghanistan. So what
is it like, dying and
killing? Not for America or
for religion, or for
economics or class
or for land or for women.
What is it like dying for your friends as an American
in a place dubbed the graveyard of
empires? The British came through
Afghanistan and couldn't subdue those folks.
The Soviets came through Afghanistan and couldn't subdue
those folks. And in 2001,
one, after the events of September
11th, we decided, yes, to go into Afghanistan
first, yes, going to Iraq second. But let's focus on
Afghanistan for right now. And we decided we were going
to disrupt, we were going to stop the
insurgents, we were going to subdue the
country. Of course, 20 years later, we would
exit in great power. Ignominity.
We're not going to talk about that today.
And the people that we sent there were not the
same people that we sent to wars in the
previous years of the 20th century.
These weren't young Gen Xers going to the Iraq war in
the early 1990s
or Somalia or Sarajevo. These
weren't soldiers
in the Vietnam era. These weren't
baby boomers and older baby boomers
and old, younger silent generation folks that we
were sending to Vietnam. These weren't
younger silent generation folks, younger World War II generation
folks that we were sending to Korea. And of course these
weren't Great Depression babies who were just grateful for three
hots in a cot and would very happily go
to Europe or island hop
across the Pacific in World War II.
The war in Afghanistan that went
on from 2001 to 2021 was
not Vietnam. It was a war not
of conscripted soldiers and low
intelligence draftees forced by social
or cultural norms to sign up.
This, this was not that, that
was not these people. These men
were not the same men that had
signed up for wars, to go fight wars for
America in other places in the past.
Matter of fact, if you ask these men, they weren't fighting the war for
America at all. They were fighting the war for an entire
myriad of reasons and America was very low on the
list. This is a challenge
of modern warfare because we have smaller and smaller troop
groups being asked to do more and more dangerous work.
It used to be that you can mass troops at the point, at
an inflection point and get some result.
That was one of the principles of World War I, is a follow
up principle from World War II and was still held to be a principle
in Vietnam. But over the course of time, what has
happening, what has happened at least in the US military
is that holding a position has become less
about a mass of people to an inflection point and is more
now about the intelligent application of force, technological
force, cyber force in our time,
and of course personnel force to any given
threat. But just like in any war,
in any time, in any era, the young men performing
these acts, holding this position, shooting people
and breaking things, they aren't doing it for political
reasons or even for social reasons or cultural reasons.
They're doing it because
it's a job with their buddies.
And I think we're going to have to wrap our brains, I think we've already
wrapped our brains around this. But the knock on effects
of this shift, this change, this
momentous move in how we actually conduct war
and the psychology of the people who conduct it has not
been fully appreciated by the non
war making non war fighting
public.
So what are we to take as we wrap up or as we begin to
turn the corner from our conversation around war? By
Sebastian Younger? Well, a couple of
things I think we can definitely take from
this Book. The big one, of course, is
that the more things change, the more they stay
depressingly the same. The United
states lost nearly 50 soldiers in the Korengal Valley,
specifically at OP Restrepo.
And the question when there is any loss of
blood or treasure, but really blood
from civilians who do not fight, the question is always
for what? Exactly. What
exactly was the strategic
outcome that we were looking for that justified
such a. From a civilian's perspective, large
tactical loss. This is the same question
that was asked in the past about the sacrifices in the trenches of
World War I, the battlefields of World War II,
the valleys and mountains of Korea and the jungles of
Vietnam and the deserts of Iraq. Both times.
And it is a question that goes to the vicious idea
or maybe the reality of trade
offs. You can never get something
for nothing. Nothing. And Thomas Sowell
once infamously said, or inciviously stated in his book
a conflict of Visions, Ideological Origins of Political
Struggles, and I quote, there are no solutions.
There are only trade offs.
By the way, the trade offs involved in war always
involve counting the costs, as was pointed out
by Jesus himself in Luke 14:28
32. You can go back and read that if you're
curious. There is a cost to things, whether it is
a material cost, an emotional cost or a
psychological cost. And we ask these young men,
and this is one of the major points that Sebastian Younger makes in his book,
particularly in the last section on
love, we ask these young men to make a
sacrifice, to lay down not only their physical lives, but lay
down their psychological lives, their emotional lives, and dare I say, even
their spiritual lives in the service of achieving
a tactical moment inside of
a larger strategic plan.
Civilian control of the military is one of the hallmarks of Western
civilization. Civilization and civilizations that come out
of and are influenced by the Western way
of war making and civilization,
sorry, civilization. Civilian control of the
military is ensured through political
elections and a formalized or.
Or formalized constitutional processes.
But this doesn't mean that the politicians that we elect, that we vote
for are any good or any better
at explaining the strategies of warfare or the outcomes of battles to the
people who voted for them than the generals are.
There's a great line in that anti war pro war
film directed by Stanley Kubrick, Dr.
Strangelove, or how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
from Sterling Hayden, who plays a general
in in a bunker in the
1950s who begins or kicks off
nuclear Armageddon. He says, and I quote, the
phrasing used to be war was too important to be left to the
generals. These days, I say war is
too important to be left to the politicians.
Close quote the
soldiers who were tasked with capturing and holding spots in the Corner
Valley in 2007 and 2008
and before and were doing so against the Taliban
were men who didn't know the strategy
either. They just knew that their country
had sent them there and now
their friends were getting shot there and all
bets were off. Remember
I said, the more things change,
the more they remain depressingly
the same. I was recently
reminded of an idea that
was buried in the book Starship Troopers
by the great Robert Heinlein, whose book A Stranger in a
Strange Land we covered on the podcast this season.
You should go back and listen to that episode. The idea in
Starship Troopers that Heinlein was rebelling against
himself, a veteran of the United States
military, the idea that he was pushing back
against was this one. And it comes
in a quip that typically comes from well meaning or
emanates from well meaning civilians who really don't
know anything about war at all.
The quip is violence is never the
answer.
Adults, particularly adults employed in the K12
education system in America, often deliver this bromide to
children. The sentiment behind such an aphorism is
admirable, and I think Heinlein would agree with me on this.
But just because it is admirable, that doesn't make it correct or
particularly useful.
Sometimes, and I'm saying this as a person who is
and has worked in the mediation and peacemaking space,
sometimes violence is the answer. It just
depends upon what the question is.
And we in the United States, we
are at a weird inflection point where the
things that happened 20 years ago and the people who did those
things and made those decisions are increasingly going to be
framed and perceived as old or
irrelevant. And the men who were
boys 20 years ago in the Korengal Valley
are going to be framed this way as well.
By the way, at the time of this recording, the news
broke that the former Vice President of the United
States, who was part of the decision making
matrix that the civilian population voted
for that, then sent those young men to the
Korengal Valley. A gentleman named Dick Cheney
has passed away. He was 84
years old, died, I suspect,
peacefully in his bed.
Hmm. War
in general is still
and remains the most serious act we as humans engage
in against other humans. And I
hope for the life of all of us that we are
exiting a time, an era over the last
20 years of deeply held
unseriousness,
unserious politicians unserious
generals, unserious executive
leadership. I pray we are exiting a time of
unserious media and unserious
entertainment. I pray that we are exiting a
time of unserious culture, and that we are
entering a time where, having been led
and been commanded and been demanded to do things by
unserious people, the people who had to do those
things now become the mature, serious ones,
and now speak with a mature and serious voice.
And I hope that we are in the
last gas of being led by those who merely perform
seriousness without a deep understanding of
competency and skill, because the
competency and skill that is required in order to
effectively dish out, for lack of a better
term, the sacrifices that are required
to make war is also a competency or
walks alongside competencies and skills that can explain
in a serious fashion to a
serious public that lies below a deeply
unserious elite the consequences of
of such actions.
And, well, that's
it for me.