At the end of this article, there is a list of books written by soldiers of our current conflict. And I feel the need to pick up and read at least a few of them.
It’s not that I fail to understand the importance of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they don’t seem real to me. This coming from a guy whose brother is a marine, and a marine whose location and purpose were often kept secret, and yet a marine who survived his first contract with the military and is beginning his second.
Maybe it’s just a case of war weariness: we’ve been at war for so long that it’s just another aspect of everyday life. “Oh, bomb went off and killed a bunch of school children in Kandahar? Oh well…”
Maybe reading it from the direct perspective can help me remember how terrible it really is.