A Quote for the Day from C.J. Chivers, author of The Gun – “The Junior Varsity’s all dead”
Terry Gross interviewed C.J. Chivers earlier this week, The AK-47: ‘The Gun’ That Changed The Battlefield (transcript, and audio, here). Chivers is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New York Times, a former Marine, and the author of The Gun, a book about the AK47. In the interview, Mr. Chivers said this:
Well, you know, one of the first rules of war is that its a very good teacher. The survivors learn. I remember when I was in Iraq in 2006, a Marine captain pulled me aside and said, you know why its tough here now – we were out in the Anbar Province – he says because the junior varsity’s all dead. We’re fighting the varsity. These are the guys who survived. They know a few things.
This is quite an insight. The war is tough because the ones who have survived are the best of the best. The junior varsity’s all dead.
I suspect this might have implications for arenas other than war… Just thinking…
