¹ Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, “Story,” Restrepo, 2009, at http://restrepothemovie.com/story.

² For more on contemporary war reportage and the public see Butler, Judith, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and Brooklyn: Verso, 2009)Google Scholar; Mitchell, W. J. T., Cloning Terror: The War Images, 9/11 to the Present (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Lewis, Jeff, Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence (London: Pluto Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

³ Hetherington and Junger.

⁴ Alain Badiou, “The Contemporary Figure of the Soldier in Politics and Poetry,” UCLA, Jan. 2007, at www.lacan.com/badsold.htm.

⁵ Usage of “grunt” reported in “Grunt, n. 2.b.” OED Online, June 2017, at www.oed.com/view/Entry/82037?rskey=iSd4xF&result=1, accessed 13 Sept. 2017; the popular designation “era of persistent conflict” was coined by General George W. Casey. See George W. Casey, “Persistent Conflict: The New Strategic Environment,” address given to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, 27 Sept. 2007, and “America's Army in an Era of Persistent Conflict,” Army Magazine, Oct. 2008, 28.

⁶ Christopher, Renny, The Viet Nam War/The American War: Images and Representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 6Google Scholar; Aufderheide, Patricia, “Your Country, My Country: How Films about the Iraq War Construct Publics,” Framework, 48, 2 (2007), 59–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other grunt docs and grunt's-eye-view narratives include “M” (1966), The Anderson Platoon (1967), Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (2003), Gunner Palace (2004), Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir (2003), Occupation Dreamland (2005), Generation Kill (2008), Armadillo (2010), and The Good Soldiers (2010).

⁷ Junger, Sebastian, War (New York: Hatchet Book Group, 2010), 25Google Scholar.

⁸ Dexter Filkins, “Nothing to Do but Kill and Wait,” New York Times, 14 May 2010, at www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/books/review/Filkins-t.html.

⁹ Turner, Victor W., The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 48Google Scholar.

¹⁰ “New Journalism” was coined by Tom Wolfe in 1973 to describe a literary movement that emerged mid-century and became a popular style in 1960s American prose. New Journalism is characterized by a highly expressive, participative style of reportage, scene-by-scene reconstruction, realistic dialogue, and a first- or third-person point of view. See Wolfe, Tom, The New Journalism (New York: Harper and Row, 1973)Google Scholar; Hartsock, J. C., A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 200), 152–203Google Scholar; Hollowell, John, Fact and Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Leo E. Litwak, “Hell's Angles,” New York Times, 29 Jan. 1967, at www.nytimes.com/1967/01/29/books/thompson-1967-angels.html.

¹² Robert Scholes, “Double Perspective on Hysteria,” Saturday Review, 24 Aug. 1968, 37.

¹³ Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 67.

¹⁴ Ibid., 7.

¹⁵ Ibid., 129, 4.

¹⁶ Ibid., 103.

¹⁷ Ibid., 29.

¹⁸ Herr, Michael, interview by Schrijber, Coco, First Kill, directed by Coco Schrijner (Netherlands: Lemming Films, 2001), DVDGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Herr, Dispatches, 4, 24, 75, 77.

²¹ Ibid., 108.

²² Ahmad, Aijaz, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (London: Verso, 1992), 9Google Scholar. Jameson offers a counterargument regarding the politics of postmodern subjectivity, arguing that despite facilitating “countercultural” groups, “the intensity of social fragmentation … has made it historically difficult to unify Left or ‘antisystemic’ forces in any durable and effective way.” See Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 54Google Scholar.

²³ Stefano, Christine di, “Choreographies,” Diacritics, 12 (Summer 1982), 66–76Google Scholar, 76.

²⁴ Hutcheon, Linda, The Politics of Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 37–38Google Scholar.

²⁵ Cobley, Evelyn, “Narrating the Facts of War: New Journalism in Herr's ‘Dispatches’ and Documentary Realism in First World War Novels,” Journal of Narrative Technique, 16, 2 (Spring 1986), 97–116Google Scholar, 98, 101.

²⁶ Ibid., 111.

²⁷ Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, the Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 25Google Scholar.

²⁸ Herr, Dispatches, 154, 189.

²⁹ Ibid., 258.

³⁰ Cobley, 107.

³¹ Timothy Page, “Words That Will Forever Pursue Us: Tim Page on Michael Herr, Rock ’n’ roll Voice of the Vietnam War,” The Guardian, 4 July 2016, at www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/05/words-that-will-forever-pursue-us-tim-page-on-michael-herr-the-rock-and-roll-voice-of-the-vietnam-war.

³² Herr, Dispatches, 38.

³³ Ibid., 246.

³⁴ Ibid., 247.

³⁵ Ibid., 248.

³⁶ Myers, Thomas, Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 167–68Google Scholar.

³⁷ Herr, Dispatches, 258.

³⁸ Carpenter, Lucas, “‘It Don't Mean Nothin’: Vietnam War Fiction and Postmodernism,” College Literature, 30, 2 (Spring 2003), 30–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 40. McInerney, Peter, “‘Straight’ and ‘Secret’ History in Vietnam War Literature,” Contemporary Literature, 22, 2 (Spring 1981), 187–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 191.

³⁹ Heberle, Mark, A Trauma Artist: Tim O'Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001), xviCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Wyatt, David, Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 183Google Scholar.

⁴¹ “About Michael Herr,” Esquire, Aug. 1968, at http://classic.esquire.com/hell-sucks.

⁴² Appy, Christian G., Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 321Google Scholar.

⁴³ Bonadonna, Reed Robert, Soldiers and Civilization: How the Profession of Arms Fought and Thought the Modern World into Existence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017), 262Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Caspar Weinberger, “The Uses of Military Power,” speech, Washington, DC, 28 Nov. 1984, PBS, at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/force/weinberger.html.

⁴⁵ Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 48.

⁴⁶ Chavez, Leo R., Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar; Kay, Lucy, Kinsley, Zoë, Phillips, Terry, and Roughley, Alan, eds., Mapping Liminalities: Thresholds in Cultural and Literary Texts (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007)Google Scholar; Asma, Stephen T., On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Hall, Stuart and Jefferson, Tony, eds., Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar; Saniotis, Arthur, “Re-enchanting Terrorism: Jihadists as ‘Liminal Beings’,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 28, 6 (Nov. 2005), 533–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Stachowitsch, Saskia, Gender Ideologies and Military Labor Markets in the U.S. (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 32Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 30–32.

⁴⁹ Bonadonna, 262.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 262–63; Moskos, Charles, “The All-Volunteer Military: Calling, Profession, or Occupation?”, Parameters, 7, 1 (1977), 2–9Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Frederick W. Kagan, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” (5 Jan. 2007), American Enterprise Institute, at www.aei.org/publication/choosing-victory-a-plan-for-success-in-iraq, 37.

⁵² Shear, Jeff, “America in the Hands of a Professional Military,” Pacific Standard, 22 (15 April 2011)Google Scholar, at https://psmag.com/social-justice/america-in-the-hands-of-a-professional-military-30240.

⁵³ For more on US military professionalization see Connor, Robert and Sarkesian, Sam, The US Military Profession into the 21st Century: War, Peace and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Rostker, Bernard, I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 2006)Google Scholar; Bolton, John, “The Price of Professionalization,” Small Wars Journal, 25 Dec. 2015Google Scholar, at http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-price-of-professionalizationhttp://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-price-of-professionalization.

⁵⁴ Jameson, Fredric, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, ed. Žižek, Slavoj (London and New York: Verso, 2016), 28Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” The Atlantic, Jan.–Feb. 2015), at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516, 18–21.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ US Army, “Information Paper,” Residential Community Initiative, July 2010, at www.rci.army.mil/programinformation/infopaper.html.

⁵⁸ Martin, James A. and Twiss, Pamela C., “Conventional and Military Public Housing for Families,” Social Service Review, 73, 2 (June 1999), 240–60Google Scholar, 242–45.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 245–46.

⁶⁰ A number of senior Army officers and strategists voiced concern over the consolidation and closure of bases, such as Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, in the 1990s–2000s. In particular, the movement was viewed as a potential threat to the Army's efforts to compete with private-sector professional trends. See US Army Material Command Oral History Papers, 1989–2012, Box 1, Folders 3–17, US Army War College Library and Archives, US Army Heritage and Education Center.

⁶¹ US Army, “Information Paper.”

⁶² Godfrey, Matthew C., Kryloff, Nicolai, Pollarine, Joshua, Sadin, Paul, and Vogel, Dawn, Privitizing Military Family Housing: A History of the U.S. Army's Residential Communities Initiative, 1995–2010 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2012), 24Google Scholar,

⁶³ Jeffrey Steele, “Celebrating Two Decades of MHPI,” Multi-Housing News, 1 March 2016, at www.multihousingnews.com/post/celebrating-two-decades-of-mhpi.

⁶⁴ Dan Lanthomose, “White House Botches Marine Corps ‘Oorah’ in Transcript of Obama Speech,” Marine Times, 7 Aug. 2013, at http://battlerattle.marinecorpstimes.com/2013/08/07/white-house-botches-marine-corps-oorah-in-transcript-of-obama-speech.

⁶⁵ Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), xiiGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ The distance is also evinced by the public's attitude toward the draft. Since the 1990s, the draft has been viewed as an anachronistic, unreasonable, and infeasible policy, and the model of the AVF has not received serious criticism or protest. The one exception, Congressman Charles Rangel, who has proposed legislation to reinstate the draft since 2003, has been largely dismissed and derided. Liberal figures such as Jon Stewart, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore have called for the draft to be reinstated, but this appeal is mobilized to critique war and/or socioeconomic inequality rather than as a serious end in itself.

⁶⁷ A 2010 White Paper from the Army's commanding general identifies distinguishing between an occupation and a profession as crucial goal: “Because of this trust, the American people grant significant autonomy to us to create our own expert knowledge and to police the application of that knowledge by individual professionals. Non-professional occupations do not enjoy similar autonomy.” See “An Army White Paper: The Profession of Arms,” US Army, 8 Dec. 2010, at http://cape.army.mil/repository/white-papers/profession-of-arms-white-paper.pdf, 2.

⁶⁸ “Join the People Who Have Joined the Army” (1973–80) is the slogan that immediately preceded “Be All You Can Be.” This slogan and its accompanying campaign represent enlisting as a civilian responsibility more than a professional identity, resembling “I Want YOU For US Army” (World War I and World War II) more than contemporary slogans. For more on US Army branding see Stephan Klaschka, “Next-Generation ERG Learn from U.S. Army Recruitment” (12 April 2011), OrgChanger, at https://orgchanger.com/2011/04/12/next-generation-erg-learn-from-u-s-army-recruitment.

⁶⁹ Orwell, George, The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage (New York: Harcourt, 1956), 366Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ “Wake Up America! Iraq Is No Dreamland: The Satya Interview with Garrett Scott and Ian Olds,” Satya, Dec. 2005–Jan. 2006, at www.satyamag.com/dec05/dreamland.html.

⁷¹ Corner, John, The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996), 28Google Scholar.

⁷² MacDougall, David, The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 6Google Scholar.

⁷³ Middleton, James, Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship (London: Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2014), 3–4Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Hetherington and Junger, “Story.”

⁷⁵ Chow, Ray, Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁶ Coy, Patrick G. and Woehrle, Lynne M., eds., Social Conflicts and Collective Identities (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 37Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ A. O. Scott, “Battle Company: Loving Life, Making War,” New York Times, 24 June 2010, at www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/movies/25restrepo.html.

⁷⁸ Jeannette Catsoulis, “Occupation: Dreamland,” New York Times, 23 Sept. 2005, at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E0D61730F930A1575AC0A9639C8B63; Peter Travers, “Restrepo,” Rolling Stone, 25 June 2010, at www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/restrepo-20100625; Steve Zeitchik, “Casualties Seen and Unseen,” Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2010, at http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/19/entertainment/la-et-docs-20100619.

⁷⁹ Hetherington and Junger.

⁸⁰ For more on the relationship between the PTSD diagnosis and the cultural representation of US soldiers see Roy Scranton, “The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to ‘Redeployment’ and ‘American Sniper’,” LA Review of Books, 25 Jan. 2015, at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trauma-hero-wilfred-owen-redeployment-american-sniper; Darda, Joseph, “The Literary Afterlife of the Korean War,” American Literature, 87, 1 (2015), 79–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Darda, “Post-traumatic Whiteness: How Vietnam Veterans Became the Basis for a New White Identity Politics,” LA Review of Books, 21 Nov. 2017, at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/post-traumatic-whiteness-how-vietnam-veterans-became-the-basis-for-a-new-white-identity-politics/#!.

⁸¹ Herr, Dispatches, 6.

⁸² Cobley, “Narrating the Facts of War,” 107.

⁸³ Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 99.

⁸⁴ Interview with Edward Bair by Wendy Rejan, US Army Material Command Oral History Papers, 1989–2012, Box 1, Folder 4, US Army War College Library and Archives, US Army Heritage and Education Center, 23.

⁸⁵ Geoff Colvin, “Adm. Mike Mullen: Debt Is Still Biggest Threat to U.S. Security,” Fortune, 10 May 2012, at http://fortune.com/2012/05/10/adm-mike-mullen-debt-is-still-biggest-threat-to-u-s-security.

⁸⁶ Butler, Judith, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso, 2009), 51Google Scholar.