Because a soldier doesn’t just think like a warrior, with mysterious acronyms and expressions reserved for insiders. Lieutenant-Colonel Michelin, of the 92nd Infantry Regiment, chose another path.
“I have the unpleasant feeling”he wrote on Wednesday, March 23, “that part of Twitter is getting the thrill of a proxy war. It should still be remembered that behind the confrontation with great blows of shocking videos, from the comfort of a country at peace, there is real scrap metal flying. The impression, here, of being at the heart of a crowd of onlookers watching a car accident.
I have the (unpleasant) feeling that part of Twitter is relying on the strategic communication tools of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict to afford the thrill of a proxy war. It’s probably inevitable, but I can’t help but find it unhealthy.
— Jean Michelin (@jean__michelin) March 23, 2022
The war, Jean Michelin knows. It’s his job, you tell me. From his mandate in Afghanistan, in 2012, he drew a book, Daffodil. Stories, portraits, tears, laughter, death, life, distressing or peaceful moments. Not in any case a military book which, retired from business, looks at his career, his career. Moreover, it was not a specialized publishing house that published it in 2017, it was Gallimard, the most famous white collection.
His Twitter account is like his book. He does not give a strategy lesson, like a TV set or a large amphitheater, he does not behave like a master of war or a lecturer. He simply tells. For example, the “threads”, these Twitter threads: it’s funny, sometimes learned, often right.
It speaks, for example, of an urgent call from the captain which he deals with… by returning to his duvet. It’s about July 14. It’s about flip flops, AMX 10 or Lebanon. It’s about books read, films seen on certain evenings in Gossi, Mali, from which Jean Michelin recently returned. If we are not “fana-mili”, if we were useless Riskthe board game, or if one is pitiful at World of Tanks on the internet, if you don’t get in the way of anything warlike, you can still follow Jean Michelin.
It’s even better because in these warlike times, where, after having been an epidemiologist, one is a strategist, the officer talks to us about women and men because that is what war is all about, in real life.. .