What do you do with an angry veteran, when they stop being an angry veteran?
What do you do with an angry veteran, when they stop being an angry veteran?
Some events this week conspired to bring me pause, anger, sadness, despair, resignation, and ultimately to reflection — and they weren’t COVID related. The acquisition of Task and Purpose, along with the shuttering of NYTimes “At War” made me wonder, what is in store for the future of veteran stories?
In 2013, I ended my active duty service in the Marine Corps, and immediately went to work on an oil-rig. In five years of active service, I had deployed to Cuba, Spain, Bahrain, and Afghanistan. I was 24 years old. I was angry. I was sad. I was full of piss and vinegar, mad at the Marine Corps for how it had conducted the war, and mad at civilians who didn’t seem to care. At some point in 2014, I started a twitter account, and started reading military blogs. Online, I found a community of people just like me, rash, still full of military bravado, full of ideas on how things could be better.
The atmosphere in military circles online was dynamic and addictive. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be content created specifically for me. Angry Staff Officer was posting a mix of history, satire, and military commentary. Max Uriarte’s Terminal Lance was roasting Marine Corps idiosyncrasies. Small Wars Journal was hosting expert commentary on what had gone wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tom Rick’s Best Defense was full of unknown but powerful voices taking on tactics, strategies, foreign policy, and professional military education. A young, angry, former Marine corporal who no one had ever heard of, I jumped in with abandon.
I got my first chance to write for Tom Ricks in early 2015, on his Best Defense blog in Foreign Policy magazine. I caught his attention with a long comment on another blog post, about how for a one-pump chump, the war in Afghanistan was full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. Tom asked me if I’d like to join a group of young formerly enlisted veterans, E-5 and below, who could comment on foreign policy and national security. I started writing like a man on a mission. There was so much that had been messed up about the war, and for the most part, I found a receptive audience, of folks hungry to hear first-hand accounts.
In the next few years I wrote for Foreign Policy, Task and Purpose, The War Horse, The Revealer — anyone that wanted to hear about veterans and war, I tried to pitch. I wrote about how leaving the Marine Corps was like a bad high school breakup. I wrote about bodies and tactics and reading lists. I had quit the oil rig, started college, and bemoaned “professional veterans” starting tee-shirt and coffee companies, but I was fast on my way to becoming one. I was singularly obsessed with talking about America’s misadventures in foreign policy. In 2018 I published in the Washington Post and the New York Times in the same week. Juvenile, righteous, and furious, I was on fire to right everything I perceived was wrong. Until I wasn’t.
At some point the steam ran out and I stopped being angry. I spent a year teaching high school after college, then law school. I didn’t have as much time to write, and the memories of war began to fade. The terms and terminology of the Marine Corps were slowly replaced by more pressing things to memorize. I stopped waking up wondering where my rifle was. I stopped writing narrative. It wasn’t a choice. I just couldn’t run on anger forever.
As I slipped more and more into civilian life, as the years and the pounds around my waist added up, I guess I assumed there would be others to take my place. The next generation would be full of the same vigor, in just the same way I had been. But I’m not so sure anymore.
Two weeks ago, Task and Purpose editor-in-chief Paul Szoldra announced that Task and Purpose had been acquired by Brookline Media. Task and Purpose was started in 2014 by Zach Iscol, a former Marine Corps officer, Lauren Katzenberg, a journalist who had covered Afghanistan, and Brian Adam Jones, a former Marine combat correspondent. One of their first articles had been about sexist social media groups of Marines, a brave nearly 7000 word expose on how, under the guise of combat infantry culture, Marines were sharing incredibly offensive and toxic content. Katzenberg moved to the New York Times in January of 2018. Jones’ last article for the site was in June of the same year. Iscol is now considering a run for mayor of NYC.
This week I scrolled through dozens of tweets bidding farewell to New York Times At War section. Katzenberg, the editor, announced on twitter that At War would be winding down. Started in 2008, as the “Baghdad Bureau,” “At War” unflinchingly covered Iraq, Afghanistan, and veterans issues, hosting an incredible array of diverse voices talking about war. Dormant in 2016, At War was resurrected in 2018. Katzenberg, Chris Chivers, John Ismay, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and a host of guest writers brought incredible and often heart-breaking stories to America’s paper of record, and its readers.
Seeing Task and Purpose fully move on from its initial founding, and seeing the news that “At War” is winding down, I wonder, is the age of the angry Iraq and Afghanistan vet over? Did it pass some time ago, and in the rush of papers due, moving to a new apartment, and all the thousand small tasks of everyday civilian life, had I missed it?
When I started out, I felt like I had taken up (in a small way) the mantle of the bloggers before me, like Colby Buzzell, who had written his incendiary blog from Iraq. Like when David Kilcullen had written from Iraq for Small Wars Journal, or Black Five brought stories from the war home, or Andrew Exum had written Abu Muqawama, or Matt Gallagher and Kaboom. I felt like a second generation had risen up behind the great war blogs, my generation: There were so many bigger names: Max Uriarte, Paul Szoldra, Thomas Brennan, Alex Horton, Mackenzie Wolf, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and so many others, but at least I got to add, in my own small way, to the chorus.
But who will take up the mantle now? The number of deployed service members has shrank from over 100,000 to just a few thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. Young service members today are on TikTok, not Twitter. Combat deployments, for the most part, are the realm of the 30+ crowd. Not many 24 year olds are coming out of the service, like I did, with a campaign ribbon and a chip on their shoulder.
Of course, you don’t have to have a combat deployment to tell stories honestly. But without war on the front page, will anyone listen? When my generation of veterans are fully middle aged, who will be left to care about war?And as spaces evolve and wind down, where will the next generation of stories be told?
I feel a bit like I did when I first got out. There is a story to tell here. The story of how we told our stories. From the milblogs, to the Facebook groups, to Twitter, to TikTok. For twenty years now, veterans have been trying to tell Americans what has been happening in their name. The wars. The suicides. The deployments and the homecomings. The reunions. The successes. The failures. Every day, veterans have been writing, tweeting, posting, and filming it all, and sharing it online. Did we get through? Did they hear us? Because we are running out of spaces where people will listen.