The Killer Elite – Wright

When I sat down to read The Killer Elite I was excited. I am really interested in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and this piece showed perfectly how the soldiers react under extreme circumstances. These are barely men, many of whom are barely educated, trying to fight a war they don’t seem to fully understand. In class, the discussion made these soldiers seem brutish and almost evil, it seemed people did not fully grasp the circumstances these soldiers are forced into.  Not only did Wright show their remorse about the children multiple times, he allowed for the soldiers to speak for themselves.

I loved the way Wright shows his conversations with these soldiers.  Wright becomes almost a therapist for these men. “’I’ve been so up and down today,” Espera says. “I guess this is how a woman feels.” He’s extremely worried about driving through Nasiriyah in a few hours and even admits to having second thoughts about coming to Iraq at all. “I asked a priest if it’s OK to kill people in war,” he tells me. “He said it’s OK as long as you don’t enjoy it. Before we crossed into Iraq, I fucking hated Arabs. I don’t know why. But as soon as we got here, it’s just gone. I just feel sorry for them. I miss my little girl. I don’t want to kill anybody’s children.’” Wright writes about a war so complicated that the soldiers don’t know what the new day will bring about. He allows the soldiers to show emotion and gives life to a war we don’t see this close up.

The one line in the story that really hit me was on page nine “It’s not just bragging. When Marines talk about the violence they wreak, there’s an almost giddy shame, an uneasy exultation in having committed society’s ultimate taboo, and doing it with state sanction.” They talk, maybe a little brash, about killing people like it is no big deal but Wright shows that it isn’t exactly what we think. These soldiers do feel bad shooting civilians but in this state it is hard to know who is innocent. Their main concern is each other and the love they share and the commitment to each other is the real beauty in the story.

This story became my favorite so far, and I am interested in reading the rest of the series.

The Killer Elite is a series of articles published in Rolling Stone magazine. This is the first part of the series.