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Give Peace a Chance
给和平一个机会
By James Stavridis
文/詹姆斯·斯塔夫里迪斯
As we take the first major, halting steps toward a peace agreement in Afghanistan,
阿富汗和平协议首次遭遇重大搁浅，
all I can remember is how we got there in the first place.
此时此刻，我的脑海里只有我们刚进军阿富汗时的情景。
On 9/11, I was a newly promoted one-star admiral, working on the Navy staff in the Pentagon.
9/11那天，刚晋升一星海军上将的我正在五角大楼的海军参谋部工作。
My office was in the new section of the building, and I literally watched the airplane hit the Pentagon.
我的办公室位于园区新建的办公楼里，所以我亲眼见证了袭击五角大楼的飞机撞向大楼的那一幕。
As I stumbled out of the burning building onto the grassy field below, the irony of the moment struck me:
我跌跌撞撞地走出着火的大楼来到楼下的草坪上时，那一刻的讽刺意味突然引入了我的脑海：
here I was, in the safest building on earth, guarded by the strongest military in history, in the capital of the richest country in the world.
我这可是在位于世界上最富有的国家的首都，有历史上最强大的军队把守，堪称地球上最安全的建筑的五角大楼啊。
If the Pentagon wasn’t safe, what was?
如果五角大楼都不安全了，那还有哪里安全呢？
We all knew everything would change, especially for those of us in the U.S. military.
大家都知道，一切都会改变，对我们这些身在美国军队里的人来说就更是如此了。
I was wrenched out of my comfortable assignment as a strategic budget officer and selected to lead “Deep Blue,”
他们将我从原来工作内容相对轻松的战略预算官的位置赶了下来，选我去领导“深蓝”那个项目，
a hastily created think tank charged with charting a new course for the Navy in what would become known as the war on terror.
这是一个仓促组建起来的智囊团，专门负责为海军规划一条新的道路，而这条道路就是后来的反恐战争。
We didn’t really know what that meant, nor did we appreciate all that would unfold in so many places around the world,
当时，我们并不知道这个项目意味着什么，也没有意识到接下来世界各地会有那么多地方陷入惨剧，
and how many would die as a result of our retaliation.
会有那么多人被我们的报复夺走生命。
But we did know that the plot that killed 3,000 Americans had begun in Afghanistan,
但杀害了3000名美国人的那场阴谋是从阿富汗开始的这一点我们是知道的，
and very quickly the focus of the U.S. military became going there, finding al-Qaeda and destroying them.
很快，美军的重点就变成了到阿富汗去，找到基地组织然后摧毁他们。
The Taliban—who had harbored them— were at the time a small obstacle that we quickly overcame.
当时的塔利班——是他们在给基地组织撑腰——在我们眼里不过就是一群蚂蚱，很快就被我们攻克了。
As tens of thousands of U.S. troops deployed to a strange, foreboding nation whose geography seemed to resemble the surface of the moon,
就在数以万计的美军一批接一批地部署到阿富汗这个地貌形似月球表面，给人感觉即陌生又不祥的国家的时候，
we could never have predicted we were embarking on the longest war in U.S. history.
我们丝毫没有预料到，我们正在筹备的是美国历史上最漫长的一次战争。
Over nearly two decades, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops rotated through Afghanistan, generally on one-year assignments.
之后的近20年时间里，数十万美军在阿富汗轮流执行任务，通常以一年为单位。
At the conflict’s peak in 2013, over 150,000 U.S. and allied troops from over 50 nations were deployed there.
2013年阿富汗冲突最紧张的时候，部署在阿富汗境内的美军及来自50多个盟国的友军人数多达15万以上。
Many became casualties, including nearly 2,500 killed and over 20,000 wounded.
不少人最后都是非死即伤，死亡人数近2500人，受伤人数更是多达2万余人。
During my four years commanding the NATO mission Enduring Freedom there,
在指挥代号“永续自由”这一北约行动的四年里，
I wrote 1,700 letters of condolence to grieving families, about a third of them Europeans.
我写了1700封致那些悲痛欲绝的军属家庭的慰问信，其中有大约1/3的家庭都是欧洲人。
It was a hard time for the U.S. military,
那段时间对美军而言十分艰难，
which was caught in a classic counterinsurgency battle against an implacable and determined foe.
因为他们陷入的是一场典型的镇压叛乱之战，他们的对手则是一个不愿和解且不达目的誓不罢休的敌人。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
