American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute.

We'll always recognize when we see old glory flying.

There's a lot of men dead so we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head.

Welcome to Current Affairs.

My name is Nathan Robinson.

I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

My guest today is Lyle, Jeremy, Rubin.

He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the War in Afghanistan,

who has written for many places, including New York Times, the nation,

and, in fact, once upon a time, current affairs.

And he is the author of the new book, Pain is a Weakness Leaving the Body,

a Marines Unbecoming available from Bold Type Books.

Lyle Jeremy Rubin, thank you for joining us on Current Affairs.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Let's start with the subtitle. Let's start with Unbecoming. Could you tell us what that, what that word means?

Sure. Well, you know, it's a military term like Unbebecoming an officer, basically an officer that does something

inappropriate in the capacity as an officer. It's also kind of unbecoming a service member,

so anyone in the military who thinks or behaves in a certain way that's considered not appropriate

given their status as representatives of the United States

uniformed services. So I kind of play with that a little bit and write about my own

unbecoming as a Marine. And in a more kind of philosophical sense, the book to a large degree is kind of using

that what I understand is a kind of marine ethos, kind of making sense of what that ethos is

...