War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

Rating:
Summary: War, Peace, and Arms
Review: Hedges begins with a quote from Plato, "only the dead have seen the end of war," and follows with a violent image of war torn Sarajevo. He uses many similar personal experiences to covey the widespread negative effects of war. His first hand accounts are painfully real and he goes into great detail describing the ways that "war exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us..." According to Hedges, "it takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers." The myth of war distorts culture. Hedges reveals that "each side creates a narrative, each side insists they are the true victims, and each side works overtime to bend their culture to support this narrative." However, Hedges goes beyond the traditional "war is hell" model and spends considerable time assigning value to war. According to Hedges, war requires and perpetuates the degradation of language, honor, truth, and humanity, but offers purpose, meaning and unity in return. This ability to site and defend the value of war is what makes Hedges' presentation unique. To him, "war makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us." The "myth of war" is powerful and addictive "narcotic," and Hedges himself concedes to its glamour, thrill, and sexy appeal. He states, "the enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, and a reason for living."

Rating:
Summary: none
Review: Why does war happen? Many scholarly texts respond to this question and focus their efforts on defining the causes of war. A fitting example of this approach, the Man, the State and War by Kenneth Waltz, outlines these causes at three levels, and offers a neutral and seemingly peacetime perspective. (For a review of Waltz, please refer to Making the World Safe for Personal Choice, By Peter J. Woolley) A thorough examination of the Man, the State and War satisfies the above question, but leaves room for another question to emerge. What happens during war? War is a Force the gives us Meaning by Chris Hedges offers an answer, and presents a candid first hand war time perspective of the ramifications of war on both the society and the individual. It is a fitting supplement and post cursor to the Waltz text and the subject of this review.
Author of War is a Force the gives us Meaning, Chris Hedges, is a war correspondent for the New York Times and a graduate of Colgate College and Harvard Divinity School. Hedges' authority and astute perspective on the process of war are fueled by his personal witness of insurgency and warfare in locations such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia, Turkey, and Iraq. He mixes this experience with references to classic literature to convey a story of war as a culture-distorting force. Hedges' describes this force as the "myth of war".
Hedges begins with a quote from Plato, "only the dead have seen the end of war," and follows with a violent image of war torn Sarajevo. He uses many similar personal experiences to covey the widespread negative effects of war. His first hand accounts are painfully real and he goes into great detail describing the ways that "war exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us..." According to Hedges, "it takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers." The myth of war distorts culture. Hedges reveals that "each side creates a narrative, each side insists they are the true victims, and each side works overtime to bend their culture to support this narrative." In war, he says, "we speak of those we fight only in the abstract; we strip them of their human qualities," and the world loses all of its "nuances and pluralistic aspects." This selective simplification fosters the clear divisions of us versus them, and good versus bad. Language and vocabulary are reduced to a scripted "code", "slogans" "national rhetoric", and "cliché". Monuments, buildings, and all signs of culture that do not support the wartime narrative are destroyed. The right to remember is regulated. Hedges refers to this as "state sponsored forgetting" and likens its effects to "a drunken night of debauchery best forgotten and impolite to mention."
However, Hedges goes beyond the traditional "war is hell" model and spends considerable time assigning value to war. According to Hedges, war requires and perpetuates the degradation of language, honor, truth, and humanity, but offers purpose, meaning and unity in return. This ability to site and defend the value of war is what makes Hedges' presentation unique. To him, "war makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us." The "myth of war" is powerful and addictive "narcotic," and Hedges himself concedes to its glamour, thrill, and sexy appeal. He states, "the enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, and a reason for living." It is understandable how the matter of fact way that Hedges presents this point has rubbed his audiences the wrong way. In May of 2003 Hedges was booed off the stage at Rockford College's graduation for presenting a similar message as the key note speaker.
Hedges concludes War is a Force that gives us Meaning by submitting friendship, love, and religion as the antidote and the "most potent enemy of war." This finish is not surprising given Hedges religious concentration, but not exactly convincing or in line with the rest of the book. All things considered, War is a Force that gives us Meaning presents an interesting look into the effects of war. On its own it is an enjoyable read, but when paired with a piece, like the Man, the State and War by Kenneth Waltz, its value increases. I would recommend this book and its presentation of the effects of war as a valuable supplement to the study of the causes of war.


Rating:
Summary: Fascinating perspective from someone who's been there
Review: I've never had someone shoot at me. I've never been bunkered in a building to escape mortar fire. I've never been the target of ethnic hatred. All I know about war I read in the media.

For this, I'm grateful to Chris Hedges. "War is a Force" briefly and almost without judgment imparts a deep perspective on how war imparts that elusive sense of purpose upon people's lives. More importantly, it shows how crafty men who understand this are able to exploit it for their own power, survival, and even enrichment.

It's especially fascinating to read about how leaders in Yugoslavia, Africa, and other hot spots have transformed fear into war into personal preservation, and then to judge how the current American administration -- for better or for worse -- used the same tactics in the build-up to the Iraq War (which had not yet begun at the time of the book's writing).

Overall, a worthwhile and transformative read.