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.

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.

If hardship brought out the worst in people, the human race wouldn't have survived. Right after 9/11, for instance, the murder rate actually went down in New York City. In World War II during the Blitz, the civilians of London were bombed almost every night for six months, but psychiatric admissions declined.

How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.

The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.