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What is it good for? 益处何在?

来源:课件天地 时间:2018-12-10 点击:

IT TAKES a very good book to carry off a title as portentous as “War”, and Sebastian Junger has written one. The story of a year-long tour of Afghanistan by an American army platoon, with whom Mr Junger was “embedded” for several spells, it is, among other things, an outstanding war report: a precise and gripping account of some of the fiercest battles involving American soldiers in recent times.
一本书,倘若能赢得自命不凡的“战争”之名,便是部了不起的著作,而塞巴斯蒂安•荣格尔就写了一部这样的作品。荣格尔和美军的一个排一道,进行了长达一年的阿富汗之旅,几度深入这些士兵的生活当中,在同类出版物当中,这确实是一部杰出的战争报道:精确而扣人心弦地记录了一些关于美军近期的惨烈战斗。更多信息请访问:http://www.24en.com/

Mr Junger’s study, a platoon of airborne infantry, was deployed to the Korengal valley, a remote and craggy tract of north-eastern Afghanistan. Of negligible strategic importance, the Korengal gained notoriety in 2005 after 19 American commandos were killed there, in one of the single biggest human and military disasters for the Americans in the then four-year campaign. An army company was subsequently deployed to the narrow, six-mile-long valley, to restore American pride, many assumed. Yet the mission failed—for many of the same reasons now threatening America and its allies’ overall effort in Afghanistan.
荣格尔的研究对象为空降步兵的一个排,部署于阿富汗东北部偏远崎岖的库伦加尔(Korengal)山谷地带。在战略上,该地区向来被认为无足轻重,但就在2005年,19名美军突击队员却在那里被杀害,是到那时四年之久的战役中,对美军而言,最大的、也是唯一的人类的和军事的灾难,此地因而声名狼藉。接着,美军又派出部队部署在这个六英里长的狭长山谷,很多人猜测,这是为了重振美国的骄傲。然而,这个使命失败了——其中原因,和现在美国及其同盟在阿富汗的全部努力所面临的威胁相同。

The American military presence was detested by the local Korengalis, a fierce and radicalised tribe who speak a language of their own and have never been ruled from outside. It also drew waves of jihadist fighters from nearby Pakistan. In the carnage that ensued, 42 Americans were killed and hundreds wounded by an enemy, Mr Junger’s account suggests, that they respected yet hardly understood. Many civilians were also killed in crossfire and aerial bombing—to which American efforts to win Afghan “hearts and minds” also fell victim. Shortly after he assumed command of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan last year, General Stanley McChrystal speculated that his soldiers in the Korengal were making more enemies every day than they were killing. Last month it was announced that the Americans had been withdrawn from the valley.
当地的库伦加尔人是个凶悍激进的部落,他们操着自己的语言,从未被外部世界统治过,痛恨美军的存在。而美军的存在也吸引起着一波又一波邻近的巴基斯坦圣战者爆发。在接下来的屠杀中,42名美军被敌人杀害、上百名美军受伤,荣格尔的报告中认为,美军关心但不理解自己的敌人。很多平民也在夹攻和空炸中被杀害——这无疑使美军企图赢得阿富汗人民的“民心与理解”的努力付之东流。在去年担任美国和北约驻阿富汗的指挥官后不久,斯坦利•麦克里斯托尔将军猜测,在库伦加尔,他的士兵天天都在结下比他们当中被杀害的人数更多的仇敌。据称,上个月,美国已从该山谷撤军。

Mr Junger, an American journalist known for his 1997 bestseller, “The Perfect Storm”, about the loss of a trawler and its six-man crew off the coast of Nova Scotia, offers little overt analysis of the wider war. Nor, revealingly, does he shed much light on America’s enemies in the Korengal. He sometimes suggests they were mostly foreign, at others that they were entirely local. Mr Junger is more interested in the war as it is experienced by the American soldiers, mostly white 20-somethings, with whom he eats, sleeps and very often nearly gets killed. This is not an objective account of the war; nor, Mr Junger insists, can war reporters ever provide one. He is in awe of his fellows’ fighting skills and mostly good-tempered acceptance of, indeed sometimes relish for, appalling danger. This leads him to a broader inquiry into why this is generally true of modern soldiers.
美国记者荣格尔,因其1997年的畅销书《完美风暴》而闻名,该书是关于一艘捕渔船在海上迷失、六名船员沿加拿大新斯科省海岸历险的故事,荣格尔并未公开提及关于广义的战争分析。显然,他也不是在描述美国在库伦加尔的敌人。他有时暗示他们多半都是外国人,但别的时候又说他们全部都是本地人。荣格尔对战争更加感兴趣,因为美国士兵——大都是20多岁的白人青年,经历了这些战争,他和他们吃饭睡觉、常常一道出生入死。荣格尔坚持认为,这既不是对战争的客观记录;也没有哪个战地记者能提供一个绝对真实的战争状况。他的同伴们的作战技术、通常宽容地接受骇人听闻的危险、有时候甚至把这当作乐趣,这些都令他感到满心敬畏。这使得他对于为什么当代军人普遍存在这种状况,展开了更广泛的调查。

The main reason, Mr Junger observes and numerous studies have confirmed, is love. The Americans in the Korengal, heroes by the standards of any warrior culture, are not especially religious or patriotic. They show little interest in the war overall or allegiance to the army at large; indeed, they cheer other units’ misfortunes. Rather, with passionate intensity, they fight for each other. “What the Army sociologists, with their clipboards and their questions and their endless meta-analyses slowly came to understand was that courage was love,” Mr Junger writes. “In war, neither could exist without the other.”
荣格尔通过观察和大量研究证实,这种现象的主要原因是爱。驻库伦加尔美军,是符合任何骑士文化标准的英雄,他们并非有着特别的宗教或爱国主义原因。大体上,他们对战争不感兴趣,或者一般来讲,对军队并无忠诚;诚然,他们为敌国的不幸而欢欣鼓舞。但是,他们更是为了同伴们而激昂力战。“军队社会学家通过笔记板、问题以及没完没了的社会学元分析,缓缓获悉的是,勇气即是爱,”荣格尔写道。“在战争中,谁离了彼此也活不下去。”

“War” becomes a love story, which Mr Junger sees unfold among a bunch of filthy infantrymen on a shot-up Afghan crag. He suggests many explanations for their growing attachment: a shared experience of suffering; an absence of other close relationships; an instinctive appreciation that the best hope for self-preservation lies with the group. In fact, as Mr Junger shows with several examples of suicidal bravery, this impulse can be fatal. Pondering the irony of that, he argues that the fame societies reserve for fallen heroes provides small compensation for their premature deaths, ensuring their names live on after their genes have been extinguished. This book provides that service for Juan Restrepo, Larry Rougle, Jason Bogar and the other Americans killed in the Korengal.
透过在阿富汗耸立的乱石丛生的悬崖上那些又脏又臭(浑身沾满泥土,身上冒着臭味)的士兵,荣格尔把“战争”写成了一部爱的故事。他给出了日益加深的感情诸多解释:分担痛苦的经历;没有其他亲友在身边;本能地认为,个人要想活下去,最好的方法就是依靠组织。实际上,荣格尔列出了一些有自杀倾向的行为,这种突如其来的念头是致命的。他辩论道,这些自杀行为中具有讽刺意味的是:社会为阵亡者保留着名誉,为他们的英年早逝提供一笔偿金,在他们的基因不复存在之后,仍确保他们的名字流芳千古。负责料理在库伦加尔被杀害的美国人(包括胡安•雷斯特雷波、拉里•胡格尔、詹森•博格等等)后事的亲友们,可与本书联系以得到上述善后服务。

One thing Mr Junger does not do, however, is push his main point to its logical conclusion: if soldiers fight bravely for love, then so may the Taliban.
然而,荣格尔没做一件事,那便是由其主要观点推出符合逻辑的结论:假如美国士兵是为爱而勇敢作战,那么塔利班或许也是这样。

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