Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan
Six years after U.S. forces attacked the Taliban regime, Elizabeth Rubin returned to Afghanistan last fall to see how American troops are faring in the war against an insurgency that never seems to end. Her "Battle Company Is Out There" in this week's New York Times Magazine describes the daily frustrations that the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team faces against Taliban fighters who hide among the local population. Rubin is a master at mixing fragments of dialogue with bursts of description that put us at the scene. Here Rubin joins Capt. Dan Kearney outside the dusty tents and wooden huts of Battle Company's outpost:
One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.
Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”
As I went to get some hot chocolate in the dining tent, the peaceful night was shattered by mortars, rockets and machine-gun fire banging and bursting around us. It was a coordinated attack on all the fire bases. It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants. www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/magazine/24afghanistan-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin