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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank; a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well. Sebastian Junger Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I don’t think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn’t offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we’d steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life. Sebastian Junger Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote