Ep. 61 – Iraq and Afghanistan Through the Eyes of the Men and Women That Fought There

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

CJ Chivers, award-winning New York Times journalist and best-selling author, joins for this episode to discuss his new book, The Fighters. In it, Chivers seeks to tell the story of America's post-9/11 wars not from a policy or strategy level, but from the perspective of the junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers who fought them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Part of it is the problem with the tactical mentality that you probably came up with
0:10.0	and that I came up with which is this can-do attitude that like, you know, give me a wall and I'll run through it
0:15.0	or get over it, but the wall won't stop me, which informs so much of the thinking and mentality of our small units.
0:23.6	That's a great way through a bar fight. It's even not a bad way through a fire fight.
0:30.6	It's not really a good way through a war.
0:36.6	Less than 1% of the country went to Afghanistan and Iraq.
0:40.7	If you do the numbers out, less than 10% of the population,
0:43.7	were families of those people, are immediately affected and committed to the wars.
0:48.0	Should we really be waging war with 10% of the population involved or paying attention?
0:55.7	Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Modern War Institute podcast.
0:59.7	I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI, and in this episode, MWI's major Jake Moraldi talks to award-winning New York Times journalist and best-selling author, CJ Chivers.
1:12.7	His newest book, The Fighters,
1:17.9	takes on the task of telling the story of America's post-9-11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the eyes of the men and women who fought them. Before embarking on his career as a writer,
1:24.2	Chivers was an infantry officer in the Marine Corps. That perspective comes through
1:28.3	in his writing and in this discussion. He set out to tell the story not strictly of the
1:33.6	policymaker's war or even the general officer's war, but of the lieutenants war, the sergeant's
1:39.0	war, and the soldiers war. Before we get to the conversation, as always, just a couple quick notes.
1:45.3	First, if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
1:50.2	LinkedIn. It's a great way to get in touch and give us feedback, which we love, and also to stay
1:55.9	up to date on the new articles, podcast episodes, and research we're releasing every day.
2:02.1	And lastly, of course,
2:06.3	what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and don't represent those at West Point, the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government. All right, here's Jake Morale
	...

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