![]() Rick Rescorla, an Englishman who served in the US army before becoming a security consultant on Wall Street, was in the Twin Towers on September 11. It is a thing of extremes that brings out the best and the worst in people. Some soldiers and civilians recall wartime as the best years of their lives, the carnage and loss forging bonds of solidarity as strong as those of family. It satisfied desires that lurk hungrily in us all, however much we might wish otherwise. A clarion call to the base instincts beneath our precious veneer of civilisation. To say that war is hell is an obvious truth, but the harder, darker and more subversive idea is that it can be persuasively glamorous too. Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien and other biographers of America’s failure in Vietnam had the answer. ![]() How could I have become a pacifist thinking about signing up to the armed forces? It took years before I understood myself, but smarter people had already worked it out. I felt confused when I went in but when I left, a bundle of helpful propaganda under my arm, I was also scared. Two years later, I walked into an army PR van for a chat with the recruitment sergeant. Studying the horror of the world wars turned me into an avowed pacifist by age fifteen.
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