Week 8 Blog 10/21/2017
Steven Bench

Hello fellow students! This week's reading was interesting and informative to me. One of the style's that stood out to me was the use of quotes. According to the book, quotes can help a story in many ways. One of the ways is to bring personality and passion to the issues.

I found an excerpt from "The Only Thing Worth Dying For" by Eric Blehm. It is a story about the Green Berets from ODA Team 574, that worked with Hamid Karzai in southern Afghanistan. They were deployed to attack al-Qaeda and the Taliban shortly after the attacks on Sept. 11 2001. Several members of their team were killed and wounded from a U.S. bomb that accidently fell on them. The quote I chose illustrates that they were not the only ones to suffer such a fate. The following is an excerpt between the leader of ODA Team 574 and Hamid Karzai after a victory over the Taliban in a village a few hours south of Kandahar. I think the quote captures the human emotion and passion of what was happening at that particular time in Afghanistan.

“Jason,” he said, as Amerine entered the room. “Come, sit. I was just going to send for you. I would like you to meet this gentleman.” Karzai gestured to a darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled man of perhaps fifty sitting beside him. “He walked here from his village in Kandahar Province—a two-day walk—after learning of our victory. He came to meet you.”

“Me?” said Amerine.

“Well, word has traveled, and he came to meet the U.S. military commander here in the south.”

“I’m honored.”

“This man would like you to know that seven of his children were killed in their home by an American bomb three weeks ago.”* Karzai translated while the man stared into Amerine’s eyes. “There was a Taliban command post nearby, but it had been abandoned.”

“I’m sorry,” Amerine said. “I’m very, very sorry.”

“He does not want you to be sorry,” said Karzai. 

The mistake I found this week was on LinkedIn. Someone put that they have "learnt" instead of "learned." We are not in Britain, so it is not appropriate to use learnt.