There aren’t many civilian jobs that come with that kind of high. Mostly, in the business world, you are pushing paper or beating a keyboard, answering to a mediocre manager, pursuing a mediocre mission with little risk in an undisciplined environment with poorly trained and often unprofessional coworkers. It’s natural to miss the times way back when you were given real power and real responsibility to do a real job of real importance among people you respected.

The only thing that makes his emotions unusual is his enormous talent for expressing them. He is a gifted writer.

Professor Blather on March 27, 2007 at 9:30 AM

So are you Professor. Indeed. Thank you,

What he is describing is not only not unique, it is a common experience – and always has been. The only thing that makes his emotions unusual is his enormous talent for expressing them. He is a gifted writer.

Warriors – amateur and professional alike – have always felt this, and the civilians have always sensed it, usually with discomfort.

The massive popularity of “300″ wasn’t an accident. Nowadays, war movies have to be so entirely anti-war that they’ve become unrealistic. The reality is, as always, between the two extremes: war is ugly and beautiful, horrifying and thrilling, something to run from and something to run to.

It is the core of history and the essence of our humanity. Call it evil, call it noble. But it’s us.

A movie like “300″ – so reminiscent of movies of earlier eras that acknowledged both sides of war, including the honor and nobility – strike something in all of us.

What was Leonidas line? Something like: “Remember this day, for it will be yours forever.”

Had he survived, he would have missed that day.

2500 years later we’re still talking about that day.

The only difference between then and now … is that once upon a time, such emotions could have been acknowledged without a shudder and recoil from the horror of it all.

Thank you, Allah. Reading that was a remarkable experience. I thank God that in every generation, there are those who step up for those who won’t.

Reading his story gives me the impression that returning home is like leaving a leading role in a comic book. Many of us will never do something even half as important as what our soldiers do over there. I can imagine that would be difficult to give up.

But theres something I’d like to point out. These vets are not addicted to war!

They’re addicted to living through it; to living life on the very razors edge and making it through alive!

No soldier likes war. We train for it because that’s our job. However, once you’ve tasted the constant adrenalin associated with being in combat you want more. It’s like being a racecar driver or doing extreme sports like base jumping. You live for the thrill of doing the thing, not the actual thing itself.

Please don’t mistake these kids men for war mongers. They’re not!

V5
(For the record I’m a veteran of both Operation Just Cause (Panama), Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and a former civilian SWAT officer, so I know where they’re coming from.)

You never hear from the guy blown in half and BLEEDING TO DEATH, CHOKING ON BITS OF HIS OWN JAWBONE AND TEETH, LOOKING DOWN AT HIS VISCERA SPILLED ONTO HIS MISSING TESTICLES AND WATCHING RED, EXTRUDED ORGANS THROBBING SLOWER AND SLOWER, THINKING:

“Christ, if only I had one more day to taste water and rest on a soft bed and kiss my girlfriend…” aS his life fades away like piss into parched sand.

Those guys are gone. Their hard truths are lost.

Wilfred Owen (killed in the last week of WW I) put it best in his posthumous poetry:

“…an ecstasy of fumbling…”

I’m glad I served when combat was Cold.

thomashton on March 26, 2007 at 6:37 PM

Cav! Not a better bunch in the Army. Troopers! My son shares your speciality. Thank you son! Thank all the sons and daughters!

So many excellent comments on this topic! This is why I love HotAir, everyday I learj something new. Personally, I think these guys live for the sense of purpose, knowing that what they do makes a difference in the world, and for the better. If their job was to kill puppies, I don’t think it’s have this effect on them. They know that they’re protecting their *own* country by fighting in someone else’s and that they have a noble purpose and mission. To come home and be an insurance adjuster or paper salesman just isn’t gonna cut it.

Any of our military readers willing to cop to similar feelings or has this guy’s adrenaline addiction taken an unusual, unhealthy turn?

While more so for them, I don’t think these feelings are restricted to vets. I know exactly what he’s talking about with the horror movies for example.

It’s because “real life” is pretty boring, especially to these guys who’ve been in such an exciting (though bad) environment. Imagine you were a skydiving instructor or scuba instructor or anything else exciting, for 5 or 10 years, and then you suddenly had it all taken away and you were working in a gas station. You’d be depressed because regular/real life is generally pretty boring.

I think we all have some of this in us, but it’s exponentially greater for those who’ve been in the war zone. It’s not that they like the death or violence, it’s the excitement. I think that’s what some may not understand about this. (Or maybe that’s just my interpretation, and the death and killing is involved, but I doubt it)

People have no idea how much freedom and responsibility young people get in the military. It’s unrivaled in the civilian world with the exception of maybe being a real entrepreneur (even that to a pales in comparison given what’s at stake.)

In Iraq, these soldiers are doing something worthy as best described by TR:
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

These men and women are in the arena.

It’s a “high” of doing awesome (in the original sense of the word) stuff with your buddies.

- The Cat

I’m now a single dad, full time with two children, so returning is out of the question. I do have to confess to a desire to return.

It’s not simply an adrenaline rush for me, however. Over there I had clarity of purpose. I was saving lives, fighting to bring something to people that had been oppressed for so long that nobody knew life without the threat of arrest and torture. I was there fighting for something I believed in, and with my experiences there, felt was absolutely the right thing to do. I saw the faces of the Iraqi people on a daily basis, and could honestly say that we were doing something they needed. I would reflect on the things I saw there, and the devices that were placed with zero regard for civilian casualties (often they were placed with the intent to kill innocents). I firmly believe that if this isn’t stopped there, my children will be seeing those same devices on our streets. If you think landmines are horrors, you need to see what they’re doing with IEDs in Iraq. Landmines are stupid and indescriminate, these IEDs are mostly command-detonated, with willful destruction of human lives in the bomber’s hearts.

Returning home to find people so out of touch with what is going on outside our protected shores, finding the most important thing in their lives is what underwear Britney Spears doesn’t have on, or who will be the next American Idol, I (and many of my fellow soldiers) are wondering just how important our sacrifices are to America. Our politicians are playing games with soldiers lives in order to prove how far they’re willing to go to prove that we can’t win this war.

In Iraq, these things are meaningless. What means something is the ability to depend on those standing to your right an left, your experience and dedication to ensure that everyone gets home alive, your ability to out think the guy who built this IED that is designed to kill you, hopefully gathering enough information to bring the builders down.

Despite the fact that they have no connection to the rest of the world, I’m also out there so that the rest of America can go on worrying about Justin Timberlake’s hair, and protesting that they’re against this war (mostly because they’re afraid of being asked to go themselves). I firmly hope that my daughter grows up in complete ignorance of just what kind of damage a man strapped with a few pounds of Semtex can do in a crowded café at lunch time. I’ll go for as long as necessary to ensure that.

I know that I’m needed over there…

Scarier is how the Islamos are hooked on the same thing, and how very encouraged it is. The glory of etnernal jihad. They have to blast their own just to get a fix.

laelaps on March 26, 2007 at 7:29 PM

Well-put. We need to addict them to something more productive, like pissing their pants.

Something kept poking me in the back of the neck the entire movie.

‘Sall I’m sayin’.

They love the smell of gunpowder in the morning.