War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges - Book Report/Review Example

Summary: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges Perhaps Chris Hedges called his book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" in order to lure the patriotic, the nationalistic, those who believe war can be fought in terms of good against evil. He no longer believes the words of the title, but he still respects good strategy. Hedges is a former war correspondent, and he approaches his subject with repentance as one who has thrived on the excitement of war. As a former staff writer for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Christian Science Monitor, he covered conflicts in Yugoslavia, El Salvador and the Middle East. He also holds degrees in literature and theology. War, he argues, is based on the myth of the other, of Us vs. Them. By envisioning a common enemy: "We are elevated above the multitude. We march toward nobility." He describes war, however hideous, as, therefore, intoxicating. Theres an ecstasy and power in killing that he compares to sexual and drug-induced euphoria (Hupp, 9). The antidote, he says, is love, which "recognizes itself in the other. It alone can save us." But humility is also a potent counterforce. Hedges argues that American self-scrutiny after Vietnam gave us an advantage in recognizing our own misdeeds. But he sees that disappearing. "The question is whether America now courts death. We no longer seem chastened." But his own statements about this period seem to evince another confusing set of myths. He praises the Vietnam War Memorial as "part of Americas battle back to truth" because it was not "funded or organized by the state but by those who survived and insisted we not forget." Then a few sentences later, he cautions, "just as the oppressors engage in selective memory and myth, so do the victims, building unassailable monuments to their own suffering." But whats frustrating about Hedges book is its refusal to point to a way out. "I am not a pacifist," he insists. "I wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it. … There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral." Theres some suggestion that the Balkan wars, which eventually brought U.S. intervention, may have been such a time. But Hedges wont say whether the campaign lived up to the imperative. In times of increasing flag-waving, Hedges book is bracing, essential. But though asking these big questions is crucial, answers are needed just as desperately. When is it worth risking death just for a chance to be "less immoral?" War and Sexual Desires In this affecting book, Chris Hedges linked war with the sex in the final chapter, he offers as his title postulate that war gives a purpose to life that otherwise lacks it, horrible though it undoubtedly is. Hes trying to answer the question, Why do nations seem to love war? I think its the inevitable working-out of the conservative world-view, which to a large degree means the male world-view. Of course, youll probably initiate events that you then cant control. But because you dont consider them, you never lose the sense of being in control, even when you arent. You can always say, "I was blind-sided," and you retain your dignity. So what if there are people in the streets screeching, "We told you so!!"? You dont have to listen to them. Youve stayed the course, acted like a man. Or here, like a conservative. War as Jihad According to hedges war is just like a movement. The Bush never hesitant regarding warning those countries that they stand with the U.S. in the war on intimidation or will be counted with those that confront. He felt that it is too jihad. He wrote that the Americans are in the dangerous position; they are going to war not with any a state but against a phantasm. The jihad that U.S. has got on is mark an indefinable and inconsistent enemy; it is the boundless battle that the U.S. has started. Hedges is one of the writers on war who can always amaze reader with shocking overviews, In this book he wrote that the reasons that were given for the war by the government was lie, he supposed that war can never give security that we wants even we feel unsafe because of it, he wrote that the America has introduced the Jihad, with U.S. personal terrorists and go on with to entrust its self violence, this is all posed as for the sake of myths, as George Bush said that the purpose behind the war is to defend the freedom. Hedges argued that People take religious wordings with their own biased or ideological point of view and changing it according to their wish. In Quran there is an event discussed in which Muhammad along with his followers when returned from the war then the Muhammad told his followers that it was a minor jihad and now it is time for the major jihad that is the concept of goodness, of spiritual purification, of principles. Hedges mentioned that this is the Islam. Islam has been distorted by the Islamic extremist. Media Hedges supposed that the Times has done a great job on reporting regarding the war, but he felt that the media has become so ruined it is only imitating the nationalistic point from the State. Hedges gives lot of examples of war journalists, including him, who work hard to collect conflicts for the coverage. Hedges compares the war journalists with the drug addicts, who are not able to live without the intensity of the hot zones. The psychology of war journalists is quite different than other people but we cannot compare it the professional worriers. Mythic Image of War For Hedges myth is not more than danger, as the nationalist myth is committing on the common person to influence him into the false impression of fighting and dying for a great valiant cause, rather than insignificant concerns of our pessimistic leaders. He argued that when there is a permission of rule of mythic reality, and then people fight in terms of unconditional, until the myth is deflate as it was in happened in Vietnam. In "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning," Chris Hedges eviscerates the heroic and nationalist myths peddled during the many wars hes covered over the past quarter-century. Those conflicts, he found, gave people from El Salvador to Sarajevo a sense of purpose - and Hedges admits he, too, got hooked on "the battlefields ecstasy of destruction." But in this slim volume, he steps back to show how soldiers and civilians alike perish senselessly and anonymously in times of war. The images are searing: a wounded rebel dying as he yells for his mother; innocents forced to dig their own graves; and fathers exhuming their own childrens remains. Todays ethnic conflicts and insurgencies, Hedges concludes, are not clashes between cultures or civilizations, nor the result of ancient ethnic hatreds (Hupp, 12). Rather, they are manufactured, "born out of the collapse of civil societies, perpetrated by fear, greed and paranoia and run by gangsters." His leaps between conflict zones often mid-page can be jarring, and the violence is gruesome (though never gratuitous). But as America gears up for another conflict with Iraq, he shows how antiseptic the images projected during the last one were and warns against regaining our own "dangerous hubris" toward war. Works Cited Hupp, Stephen L.. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Book Review) Library Journal, 03630277, 9/15/2002, Vol. 127, Issue 15 Read More