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" I think, politically, I'm pretty left-wing, and I try to be very neutral in my work. "
Sebastian Junger
Think
Try
Work
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" No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out. "
Sebastian Junger
Remember
Vote
Advice
" No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well. "
Sebastian Junger
Job
Gun
Battle
" Well, the fact that the news industry doesn't have enough money to only send salaried staff to war zones means there is an enormous, wide-open opportunity for young people who want to be on staff and don't know how to get there. "
Sebastian Junger
Opportunity
People
War
" There are no journalistic ethics that transcend the value of human life. There are none. In a situation where you can save a human life, you must. There isn't any conflict in my mind. "
Sebastian Junger
You
Mind
Life
" I think objectivity is like this strange myth that people think you're supposed to achieve, but actually, the dirty little secret is that it's not attainable any more than pure justice is attainable by the courts. "
Sebastian Junger
People
Strange
You
" Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf? "
Sebastian Junger
Office
You
Play
" The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place. "
Sebastian Junger
First
Why
Place
" There are photographers who don't really engage with their subject. It's a really unfortunate phrase, but they take their photo and they leave with it. It works but I think it ultimately limits how profound the work can be. "
Sebastian Junger
Work
Think
Leave
" The American military generally counts on a kill ratio of 10 to 1 when fighting lightly armed insurgents: for every dead American, there are probably 10 dead enemy. "
Sebastian Junger
American
Fighting
Enemy
" The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by. "
Sebastian Junger
Brotherhood
Battle
You
" I went to Afghanistan in '96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn't terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power. "
Sebastian Junger
Over
Training
Right
" When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before. "
Sebastian Junger
Die
Giving
World
" I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived. "
Sebastian Junger
Think
Society
Men
" In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence, an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't? "
Sebastian Junger
Theory
Life
Act
" The Kosovars were granted autonomy at the end of World War II, but then aspiring president Milosevic had the autonomy revoked in 1989, and the Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the recent war in Bosnia and Croatia, failed to address the issue of Kosovo's status. "
Sebastian Junger
War
President
End
" Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society. "
Sebastian Junger
Accept
Remember
Got
" I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business. "
Sebastian Junger
Medical
Training
Risks
" The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me. "
Sebastian Junger
Life
Car
Divorce
" What is and isn't justified by military necessity is, naturally, open to interpretation. One of the key concepts, though, is the law of proportionality. A military attack that results in civilian casualties - 'collateral damage' - is acceptable as long as the military benefits outweigh the price that is paid by humanity. "
Sebastian Junger
Humanity
Results
Price
" The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations. "
Sebastian Junger
Ugly
Son
Long
" If you get an infection, you get a fever; the fever is your body dealing with the infection. If you get traumatized, your mind and your brain have a reaction to that trauma. If you're not dreaming about it, something's probably wrong. "
Sebastian Junger
Wrong
You
Your Body
" People ask me about 'The Hurt Locker' a lot, and it's an incredible piece of filmmaking - as are 'Band of Brothers' and 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Apocalypse Now.' But they're not necessarily true to war in a literal sense. What they are, really, are brilliant movies about Hollywood's idea of war. "
Sebastian Junger
People
Hurt
Me
" Traditional Albanian society was based on a clan system and was further divided into brotherhoods and bajraks. The bajrak system identified a local leader, called a bajrakar, who could be counted on to provide a certain number of men for military duty. "
Sebastian Junger
Divided
Duty
Leader
" If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have. "
Sebastian Junger
Target
War
Shell
" I have been working since I was 20, and I'm 38. I actually once averaged out what I had made over my professional life. I think I could have made that much as a waiter or an insurance salesman. You know, I spent so many years in my 20's making $10,000 a year. "
Sebastian Junger
Know
Life
You
" People really in the meat grinder of the front lines are not, for the most part, insured or salaried network correspondents. They're young freelancers. They're kind of a cheap date for the news industry. "
Sebastian Junger
Cheap
News
Young
" Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it's shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear response is automatic, though, and your body runs through its reflexes whether you want it to or not. "
Sebastian Junger
Fear
You
Try
" I've stopped war reporting. I realized that I'd answered all of my questions about war and about myself. "
Sebastian Junger
About
War
Reporting
" It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important. "
Sebastian Junger
Fun
Interesting
Money
" A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank; a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well. "
Sebastian Junger
Take
Cocktail
Will