I had hoped that Chris Hedges, when he spoke at the Fine Arts Center last Thursday night, would be giving a talk about recent developments in Iraq or American jingoism since his book, “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, was first published two years ago. Instead, he essentially (re)read the book to the audience, at times reciting entire passages word for word.
This fact was easily forgiven, however, if only because of the veteran war correspondent’s pathetic, death-haunted demeanor: Hedges gave his talk with all the sincerity of a preacher delivering his own eulogy. Yet the repetition was even more understandable when considering that Mr. Hedges’s book is an entirely self-contained, inward looking piece of literature that tells us virtually nothing about our own lives. In fact, I’d argue that even the little that it does tell us is either useless or, worse, counterproductive.
No, I speak not of the allegedly “anti-American” and “anti-Israel” passages that have inspired most of the book’s criticism. Indeed, that these are the only controversies the book has touched off speaks I think to War’s major weakness, that is its ultimate failure to challenge us to take responsibility for our own actions. Readings Hedges, one can only be left with the impression that all the evils of war are carried out not by individuals, armies, or even states, but are instead the consequence of some ethereal three-letter concept that answers to no one and under which we as human beings are utterly powerless.
We are, according to the fatalistic worldview contained in War Is a Force, forever at the mercy of our nature, from which springs the historically inevitable act of warfare. Coming from a book that sets itself up in opposition to war, the inherent sense of surrender in this attitude is more than a little confusing. It also, once again, implies nothing. Let us assume that war is inevitable – perhaps, even, in our very DNA. Have we then freed ourselves from speaking out against or working to terminate those wars that we oppose?
The question has no bearing on reality; on the contrary, it is like much of the book a kind of propaganda, serving only to entangle our minds in poetic sophistries while immobilizing us from taking action in the real world. This is the same world in which our country has murdered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis over the past two years, has doubled the numbers of starving children in that country since we invaded, is systematically engaged in the torture and indefinite detention of persons in the name of “fighting terror,” and long ago ceased even making the slightest reference to pursuing those actually responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yes, that world. You remember, don’t you?
But even granting all of the premises necessary for these criticisms is going too far; the simple act of opening Hedges’s book, of engaging in a discussion with the author on “why war is bad,” is in itself a sort of crime against humanity. For that war is horrible beyond words should already be a truism for all of us. And so I’m not quite sure who the author could possibly be arguing against – except, perhaps, his own war-ravaged soul.
As an autobiographical account of one man’s personal experiences covering war, Hedges’s book might then have some value. The problem is that it’s widely being read as a definitive psychological diagnosis of the human race as a whole – or even worse, as a form of protest against the war in Iraq.
That we would honestly need someone to remind us that, in essence, “war is bad” is a very ominous sign of the times; but the utter sense of moral irresponsibility carried throughout War’s pages, if heeded, will serve only to heighten your sense of foreboding. But if you are so depraved that you need this sort of wakeup call, be advised that little of this book is concerned actually with killings on the battlefield-in fact a sizeable chunk of it deals with social corollaries like drug use, pornography, alienation, and, yes, even the dreaded scourge of lesbianism.
Personally, I would have preferred it were Ward Churchill standing at that podium Thursday night denouncing us all as the moral equivalents of Adolph Eichmann – at least then we might be stirred into thinking critically about our roles in the world. But that’s just me.
Mike Sances is a Collegian columnist.
