Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War

We're like America's little pit bull. They beat it, starve it, mistreat it, and once in a while they let it out to attack somebody.

You know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps," Person continues. "you get you brains back.

It struck me that such analyses had it backward. It’s the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it. When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it. The young troops I profiled in Generation Kill, as well as the other men and women in uniform I’ve encountered in combat zones throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, are among the finest people of their generation. We misuse them at our own peril.

Hey, it's ten in the morning!' says Person, yelling at two farmers dressed in robes in the distance. 'Don't you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?

The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary.

With everyone lounging around, eating sleeping, sunning, pooping, it looks like some weird combat version of an outdoor rock festival.

A true warrior can only serve others, not himself...When you become a mercenary, you're just a bully with a gun.

They kill hundreds of people, those pilots. I would have loved to have flown the plane that dropped the bomb on Japan. A couple of dudes killed hundreds of thousands. That f****** rules! Yeah!

NAMBLA's infiltrated First Recon,' Person continues after bringing the vehicle to a stop. 'There's a guy in Third Platoon, hes going to be collecting photographs of all the children and sending them back to NAMBLA HQ. Back at Pendleton he volunteers at the daycare center. He goes around collecting all the turds from the five-year-olds and puts them into Copenhagen tins. Out there everyone thinks he's dipping, but it's not tobacco. It's dookie from five-year-olds.

One of the few comforts I have when looking at images of distant suffering is the hope that the starving child with flies on his face doesn't know how pathetic he is. If all he knows is misery, maybe his suffering isn't as bad.

In my civilian world at home in Los Angeles, half the people I know are on antidepressants or anti–panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at the 7-Eleven when buying a Slurpee.

Gentlemen, we just siezed an airfield. That was pretty ninja.

ROTC programs at Ivy League campuses would liberalize the military. That can only be good for this country.

Taking a shit is always a big production in a war zone.

Marines getting baptized? This used to be a place of men with pure warrior spirit. Chaplains are a goddamn waste.

Get some! expresses in two simple words the excitement, fear, feelings of power and the erotic-tinged thrill that come from confronting the extreme physical and emotional challenges posed by death, which is, of course, what war is all about.

• What unites them is an almost reckless desire to test themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out in reality TV shows and pop-song lyrics. They've chosen asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, theyíve subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation.

The fucked thing,” Doc Bryan says, “is the men we’ve been fighting probably came here for the same reasons we did, to test themselves, to feel what war is like. In my view it doesn’t matter if you oppose or support war. The machine goes on.

She looks to be about three, the same age as his daughter at home in California...the girl's eyes are open. She seems to be cowering...Graves reaches in to pick her up- thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her...when the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out.

I cruised into this war thinking my buddy's going to take a bullet, and I'm going to be the fucking hero pulling him out of harm's way. Instead, I end up pulling out this little girl we shot, hiding in the backseat of her dad's car.

Vigorous public ball scratching is common in the combat-arms side of the Marine Corps, even among high-level officers in the midst of briefings.

You find surprising things about the privite life of a country when you invide it