The author reviews a documentary film entitled, "Restrepo" by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. He contrasts their portrayal of the Afghan war, which has been received with widespread acclaim in mainstream media, with mainstream coverage of the Vietnam War, and the volunteer soldier with the citizen soldier of that earlier war.
It didn’t take rocket-scientists to figure out that you couldn’t conduct long-term, wheel-spinning occupations in distant lands with a military like that [ref. Vietnam War]. And so the long-occupation-friendly all-volunteer force that Junger has come to know was born. That he has such a hard time understanding the citizen-soldier response to the American lost cause in Vietnam essentially ensures that the civilian story of war, especially that of alien civilians in a distant land, would evade his understanding. This is what makes the relative isolation of the unit he deals with in Restrepo so useful, even comfortable for him as he assesses a very American version of what war is all about.Having lived through the Vietnam War as an at-home anti-war activist, I don't recall the coverage of that war as portraying the civilian side of it very much, but these current wars have been extremely sanitized. The ruling class has learned much about how to conduct its wars.