What Makes For A Good Soldier?

In reviewing a new book on the experience of war, Andrew Exum reveals why his own service didn't leave him with psychological scars:

Why have I not suffered from being in war? I can only hazard guesses. I was born and raised in the mountains and valleys of East Tennessee.

My family has owned the same farm in northern Hamilton County for two centuries, and one of my ancestors led North Carolina’s militia during the American Revolution. East Tennesseans are, generally speaking, kind and God-fearing mountain people. During the Civil War, though, we waged partisan, guerrilla warfare against both outsiders and ourselves with a brutality that horrified Union and Confederate commanders alike. Set against one another, we killed our cousins and erstwhile friends with both cunning and terrifying violence. We are, in other words, the Americans perhaps best suited, psychologically speaking, for combat in the mountains of Afghanistan. The only differences, perhaps, between the Taliban of Afghanistan and the Presbyterians of East Tennessee is that the former are both far poorer marksmen and more tolerant toward the Roman Catholic Church.