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A Culture of Atrocity
All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are swiftly placed in what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton terms "atrocity-producing situations." In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke or driving down a street means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress leads troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage that soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen as supporting the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral one. It is a leap from killing-the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm-to murder-the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. American Marines and soldiers have become, after four years of war, acclimated to atrocity.
The American killing project is not described in these terms to the distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract of glory, honor and heroism, of the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. The press, as in most wars, is slavishly compliant. The reality of the war-the fact that the occupation forces have become, along with the rampaging militias, a source of terror to most Iraqis-is not transmitted to the American public. The press chronicles the physical and emotional wounds visited on those who kill in our name. The Iraqis, those we kill, are largely nameless, faceless dead. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a regrettable but necessary virtue.
The reality and the mythic narrative of war collide when embittered combat veterans return home. They find themselves estranged from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation.
Tina Susman in a June 12 article in the Los Angeles Times gave readers a rare glimpse into this side of the war. She wrote about a 17-year-old Iraqi boy killed by the wild, random fire unleashed by American soldiers in a Baghdad neighborhood following a bomb blast. These killings, which Iraqis say occur daily, are seldom confirmed, but in this case the boy was the son of a local Los Angeles Times employee.
Iraqi physicians, overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, published a study last year in the British medical journal The Lancet. The study estimated that 655,000 more people than normal have died in Iraq since coalition forces invaded the country in March 2003. This is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech last December.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence. The remaining deaths occurred from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 additional violent deaths per day throughout the country.
Lt. Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran who is a professor of international relations at Boston University, estimated last year that U.S. troops had killed "tens of thousands" of innocent Iraqis through accidents or reckless fire.
Official figures have ceased to exist. The Iraqi government no longer releases the number of civilian casualties and the U.S. military does not usually give reports about civilians killed or wounded by U.S. forces.
"It's a psychological thing. When one U.S. soldier gets killed or injured, they shoot in vengeance," Alaa Safi told the Los Angeles Times. He said his brother, Ahmed, was killed April 4 when U.S. troops riddled the streets of their southwestern Baghdad neighborhood with bullets after a sniper attack.
War is the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in primal impulses we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power of the divine, the power to give or annihilate life. Armed units become crazed by the frenzy of destruction. All things, including human beings, become objects-objects to either gratify or destroy or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that.
Human beings are machine-gunned and bombed from the air, automatic grenade launchers pepper hovels and neighborhoods with high-powered explosives, and convoys tear through Iraq, speeding freight trains of death. These soldiers and Marines have at their fingertips the heady ability to call in firepower that obliterates landscapes and villages. The moral universe is turned upside down. No one walks away uninfected. War thrusts us into a vortex of barbarity, pain and fleeting ecstasy. It thrusts us into a world where law is of little consequence.
It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men and women into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy. All feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist gratuitous slaughter. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage is not.
Military machines and state bureaucracies, which seek to make us obey, seek also to silence those who return from war and speak the truth. Besides, the public has little desire to puncture the mythic, heroic narrative. The essence of war, which is death, is carefully masked from view. The few lone journalists who attempt to speak the truth about war, to describe the experience of constantly being on the receiving end of American firepower, soon become pariahs, no longer able to embed with the military, dine out with officials in the Green Zone or get press credentials. And so the vast majority of the press lies to us, although not overtly; it is the lie of omission, but it is a lie nonetheless.
The veterans who return, even if they do not speak about the atrocities they have committed or witnessed in Iraq, will spend the rest of their lives coping with what they have done. They will suffer delayed reactions to stress. They will endure, as have those who returned from Vietnam, a crisis of faith. The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The high priests of our civic religion, from politicians to preachers to television pundits, who promised them glory and honor through war betrayed them.
War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. This bitter knowledge of betrayal is seeping into the ranks of the American military. It is bringing us a new wave of enraged and disenfranchised veterans who will never again trust the country that sent them to war.
We make our heroes out of clay. We laud their gallant deeds. We give them uniforms with colored ribbons for the acts of violence they committed or endured. They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. They are our plaster saints, the icons we cheer to defend us and make us and our nation great. They are the props of our demented civic religion, our love of power and force, our belief in our right as a chosen nation to wield this force against the weak. This is our nation's idolatry of itself.
Prophets are not those who speak of piety and duty from pulpits-there are few people in pulpits worth listening to. The prophets are the battered wrecks of men and women who return from Iraq and find the courage to speak the halting words we do not want to hear, words that we must hear and digest in order to know ourselves. These veterans, the ones who dare to tell the truth, have seen and tasted how war plunges us into barbarity, perversion, pain and an unchecked orgy of death. And it is their testimonies, if we take the time to listen, which alone can save us. Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."
©2007 TruthDig.com
66 Comments so far
Show AllEveryone who knows anything about war or who was over the age of 12 during the Vietnam era knows the info contained in this essay. It is, in a word, redundant. Those who were against the war in the first place realized a war of this kind would be slaughter and that the GIs who returned unscathed otherwise would have all the same scars of those who returned from Vietnam. In Vietnam they were told "there is a commie behind every tree" and "you can't trust little kids because they wire them with explosives", so it is ok to kill them. Of course, it was true that the people working side by side with the GIs, were, in fact, North Vietnamese sympthasizer, but this is what happens when you invade someone else's country and they don't want you there. Second verse same as the first. Those who were against the war realized this; those who were for the war didn't give a damn anyway, and still don't. They would rather drink their koolaid and wave a flag. They are of the church of "let's go kick some ass," and deep down probably don't care how many poor suckers are sacrificed as long as the oil keeps flowing--or some are in self-deception, trusting Big Daddy who "probably knows things we don't." All of these people who claim to have respect for private property don't see a thing wrong with invading a country to get it's oil or to try to force it to have an economic system like we want them to have. This makes me think that if my neighbor has a nicer home than mine, maybe I ought to just knock him off and take it--that is, if I m strong enough militarily to get by with it. Morality be damned.
We can speak truth to power all we want--but power is going to go on doing just what it wants to do--putting into operation dark, clandestine plans hatched up at some Skull and Bones meeting, no doubt. The secret government will continue to get huge sums of money that aren't accounted for, and when their dirty deeds are over, Congress will slap them on the hands and say "bad boys" (think MKULTRA, etc and the Church hearings), but then the next round of clandestine operations will go into effect. After all the atrocities are over, the Conaleeza Rices, Don Rumsfelds, and others will not be held accountable for their actions. In fact, Rice will probably get a job teaching Foreign Relations at Harvard, Yale or some other Ivy League school. Murder and mischief committed by the higher echelon is always rewarded richly in this country. Forget that every prediction they made about this war has been shown to be ridiculous. They will still be seen as "great statemen (women)" who will be given cushy jobs teaching our young people to be the next generation of leaders. Or more likely, they will be lobbyist for the military industrial complex that they have supported so well while in public (sic) office.
After we started bombing Iraq, I saw a report about an Iraqi woman whose whole family was wiped out when her house was bombed by American forces. "What kind of God do these people worship?" She asked, as she cried and lamented her fate. Good question, lady, I wonder about it myself. Who ever he/it/she is, must be pretty darn evil. One thing I can promise you, it is not the Christ of the New Testament. After that, you guess is as good as mine.
If the war in Iraq ends tomorrow and our troops come home right away, we STILL will not have seen the end to the pain, death and violence this episode in American history will have wrought.
First of all, the people of the Middle East have a different mentality of those in the West. They carry "vendettas" for centuries, and will not soon forget and forgive America and Great Britain for what we have done to them. MANY reliable sources have said that we have only increased the recruiting power of groups like al Qaeda.
Next, we will have a generation of soldiers and former soldiers who will carry the scars of their battles with them for the rest of their lives... in the form of missing limbs, serious health problems, usually some undiagnosed "syndrome" that plagues them for decades before the military finally gives in and pays their health benefits as in "Agent Orange" and "Gulf War Syndrome".
...and finally, soldiers and former soldiers who will carry their mental scars and damage for a generation... shooting their families, themselves, co-workers at the Post Office and the neighborhood McDonalds because they can no longer deal with the normal frustrations of life and they didn't get the mental health care they really needed following their duty.
War IS Hell... but so is the aftermath of war, especially when our government glorifies it without considering the long term human damage it does.
let's not forget that one timothy mcveigh was a veteran of gulf war 1. let's also not forget that the warriors are victims, too. i'm not saying they are the same as their innocent victims, but they will have had their lives destroyed, too, and are really viewed as little more than expendable props in a rich man's game.
Holymoly writes:
After we started bombing Iraq, I saw a report about an Iraqi woman whose whole family was wiped out when her house was bombed by American forces. "What kind of God do these people worship?" She asked, as she cried and lamented her fate. Good question, lady, I wonder about it myself. Who ever he/it/she is, must be pretty darn evil. One thing I can promise you, it is not the Christ of the New Testament. After that, you guess is as good as mine."
The Christers never learn, do they? The Christ of the New Testament was a vindictive, racist (religiously speaking), deluded man--and so are today's Christers. They do exactly as their Fuhrer told them: all those who disagree with me (Christ) will burn for eternity in hell. Amazing, I was hoping that "Holymoly" would be an exception and follow up his logic with a logical conclusion. But, no, he still believes in that pathetic, antihuman Christ of his. As does Bush, Chenney, Rice, and a billion of Christers on a mission to stamp out sin in the world and make sure that everyone is a deluded Christer. And so they kill and kill and kill.
Well there's a surprise American soldiers indiscriminately murdering women and children remember My Lai village in Vietnam republic of when they murdered 400+ Women, children and old men...
Some things never change..
AMERIKKKA is the real threat to world peace
On balance, the worth of this article is in the following paragraph:
"War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. This bitter knowledge of betrayal is seeping into the ranks of the American military. It is bringing us a new wave of enraged and disenfranchised veterans who will never again trust the country that sent them to war."
The real attrocity of war is that it is never over--only in recess until its next malignanacy masticizes into a fresh outbreak.
Jesus didnt condemn human slavery and made deals with demons so they could possess innocent swine and stampede them off cliffs. Not a good fellow--for someone who is supposed to be the creator of All.
Timothy McVeigh was also a hunter.
Today on Counterpunch there was an article about Ted Turner's canned hunting ranches, where you can pay to have a docile or drugged animal brought out so you can kill it. There are humans who enjoy killing for pleasure. War is an extension of that tendency.
As LaFontaine wrote in his poem a Bird Shot by an Arrow
"Ah cruel men, from our wings you drew
the plume that winged the shaft that slew,
But mock us not you heartless race,
for you too will sometime take our place,
for half at least of Japhet's brothers,
forge swords and knives to slay the others."
Check out Joshua Key's book that just came out
"A Deserter's Tale."
He's a war resister now residing in Canada who refused to go back to Iraq for a second tour of horror.
http://www.amazon.com/Deserters-Tale-Ordinary-Soldier-Walked/dp/0871139545
Everyone around the IS the enemy. This sort of Nazi occupation is not going to be popular with anyone except the Quislings in the Green Zone who are stealing as much as they can as fast as they can to finance their new mansions on the Riviera.
This latest "War of Liberation" is somewhat different than the preceding "WOL's. The one in Iraq almost exclusively "urban combat", Afghanistan both, with emphasis on mountain rural. Those of us who served in South East Asia, with a few exceptions were "in the bush". I have learned that urban combat is the most stressful and leaves the deepest scars.
These men and women will be coming back to "the world" (as the VietVet would say) and many are going to still be in "combat mode", and exceptionally dangerous to themselves and the rest of us. Combat does that, and killing your fellow human being becomes second nature----in fact you rationalize the most bazaar and absurd justifications ---only those who have been there would know.
So what are those "mental wizards" in Washington going to do?
How about the same thing they did for ALL of the other Vets who went before these. Not one thing.
That will be left up to US-------are we up to it?
Yellow Horse
Iraq War Veterans Speak:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zfQQAqh9DU
The Iraqis expect to be murdered. They have steadfastly refused to give up their oil in the face of threatened annihilation. So what would they expect a predatory empire to do, start behaving like a civilized entity? Would they expect people who have always found pleasure in taking more than their fair share to just go cold turkey? Would they expect bloodthirsty rapacious chickenhawks to wince at news of the slaughter of innocents?
The remaining evil empire is thrashing about as it unravels, and good people everywhere have to do what they can to control the damage. As an agnostic, I recognize that there are higher moral laws than those represented in any code of any government, and I hope that other agnostics and atheists, as well as believers, recognize the same.
Because the population in Iraq refuses to cooperate with their occupiers America will attack Iran with nuclear weapons targeting "nuclear facilities" that just happen to coincide with population centers. When the Shia in Iraq turn on their American friends they'll get the same as Iran.
Chris Hedges doesn't mention that war is an instrument of policy in his elaborations of what war is. It is diplomacy by other means. It is always an option on the table and there are few people who take seriously the idea that war is not necessary.
Every person on the street, whether scarred veteran or complacent citizen unitiated in the horror of war, will admit that the US must have a powerful military. No congressman or senator will advocate cutting the Pentagon's budget.
War is like fate and you just hope it spares you as you avert your eyes from the poor ragged bastard sitting there on the curb, babbling to himself.
The military juggernaut rolls on with unstoppable momentum and few people know that it can be stopped. It can be dismantled.
This begins with one person, prosaically enough, dismantling the framework of belief in war that exists first of all within one's own head. This isn't easy because it means deconstructing the world as we know it, which exist first of all in one's own head.
This can be done. But few people do it.
So, the juggernaut rumbles on and "liberals" grow ever more eloquent about the horrors of war and conservatives shed patriotic tears with the thought of the noble "ultimate sacrifice".
It all seems a bit redundant, as holymoly says above.
The world will be consumed in a conflagration of war, most likely, and one hopes the survivors will emerge from the rubble and finally realize that war is not necessary on some instinctual level. It is not fate. Soldiers are not saints. Life is not nasty, brutish, and short. Nations can get along quite nicely without war.
I know it can be done. I wouldn't have voluntarily joined up with this species otherwise.
One point overlooked: most of our soldiers know that THERE IS NO WAR. The troop-authored books, interviews, blogs all have a central theme: what the hell are we killing for? At least in a "war" the lines, right or wrong, are clearly defined, there's something for the mind to fall back on - defense of country. But our soldiers aren't stupid and their writings prove it: they are fully aware of their fubar situation and can do nothing but continue to follow illegal orders. They know neither Iraq, Iran nor any other Mid East country has the capacity to attack America. They know that "killing them there" has nothing to do with them "coming here." They know their "leaders" are lying, and they have seen what happens to truthtellers. Plus, since they know there is no "war," they also no there will be no "victory" - how does one win something that does not exist? Mr. Hedges is right, except now times what he's written by a factor of 10...
The author differentiates between the insurgents and the innocents.
I understand the point, but, really, what is the difference? The premise is operating within the mindset that there is some kind of legitimate fight occurring.
For that matter, Timothy McVeigh, another classic example.
Support the troops....
Chris Hedges ususally has more to say than this. But he needs to advertise his books. This, apparently,is how it is done.
Holymoly is right on the money. This is pointless and trite and narcotizingly dull sloganeering. Murder is murder. Soldiers sent where they shouldn't be who commit murder are still murderers. Like trigger happy cops, they shouldn't be in uniform if they can't handle the pressures. Like shortstops and school teachers and accountants, there are good ones and there are bad ones. Soldiers who rape and murder are irredeemably evil thugs, period.
Almost no one went to prison for Viet Nam, nor for Iraq, nor for any of a hundred other killing sprees produced and directed by the Pentagon and the war profiteers. If one is to introduce the subject of morality into a discussion of war, one should have enough respect for one's readership to begin at the top of the hierarchy and work down. That is how liability and responsibility flow in the western world. What some terrified, vengeful GI does after a roadside bomb kills one of his friends is quite a bit down the scale in the pyramid of responsibility for the bigger picture. Additionally, these soldiers chose this as a profession or as a pragmatic means to an end. Any negligent homicide or vengeance killing along the way can hardly be expunged with words of phoney gratitude for their patriotic sacrifice.
What part of "Thou shalt not kill" don't you understand? - God
Yellow Horse wrote I have learned that urban combat is the most stressful and leaves the deepest scars.
Of course. We learned that in Mogadishu (1993).
But it looks like our leaders (both political and military) remember nothing.
Hedges writes, "the troops view everyone around them as the enemy".
Not because we liked it, but it was often so in Vietnam. I came very close to death on two seperate occasions, once when our South Vietnamese comrades in arms, managed to blow up a C-130 I was supposed to be flying on. Only good fortune and sheer dumb luck for me interviened, as I was transferred to another crew at the very last minute. Another was when the head barber at Cameron Bay's BX barber shop, led a night time sapper attack on the base. They were after the crew quarters on "Herky HIll" but missed us in the darkness and hit the 22nd, Army hospital instead.
Yes, war really is hell and we don't need to be there, should never have gone there and should pull out of there. But it ain't gonna happen as long as GWB is our King.
Yellow Horse:
"But it looks like our leaders (both political and military) remember nothing."
Of course not! They haven't "Been there, done that. The cowards.
Yellow Horse, you beat me to the draw. If all will remember, Dubya was given a tour in the Air Guard, and even that he went AWOL from, and then there is Deadeye Dick who had something like four deferrments???
The only thing these deserve is a trial via The Hague and the results therefrom.
I dread the future many of our troops face. I was fortunate enough to miss Viet Nam by a couple of weeks, however, a cousin was not so fortunate. He served as a captain in the Marine Corp and was involved in recon during the Viet Nam War. During his stint, he along with soldiers such as the late and great Col. David Hackworth continuously corresponded with William Westmoreland of the Joint Cheifs with letters of protest and criticism of the incompetance of Washington D.C. He returned with terrible nightmares, alcoholism, guilt, all of which led to eventual suicide. Our present leaders are criminals of the highest order. They should be regarded and treated as such.
ALL WARS ARE IMMORAL!!! Patriotism is a sham used to convince the uninformed to allow themselves to be involved in enforcing corporate policy on the unwilling. There are no good wars...WWII included.
25% of I.G. Farben, one of the major suppliers of the nazi war machine, was owned by US Steel!!! Hitler was in power because corporations put him there. George Bush is in power because corporations put him there!
During the Civil War millions of southern men fought to maintain the right of the top 2% of society to own slaves, something the other 98% couldn't afford to do.
ALL wars are fought for the interest of the wealthy few
by suckering the rest of the population into dying for
their special interest by pretending some huge moral issue is at stake...and it is always a lie. The world is not a better place now that Saddam is dead. They used the "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" lie in Vietnam as well and despite the fact the North won the war I have yet to see the invasion of San Francisco the liars claimed would happen if we didn't stay.
America has a way of sticking its big fat ass into situations where it has no legitimate business and keeps getting it kicked pretty good. Remember what happened to the Redcoats? Well we are them now.
Well, simple solution eh? Just stay out of those situations and stop trying to be the worldwide policeman and moral crusader.
Until then it's going to have a sore, fat behind. Just say no, hell no, we won't go. We are all so sick of the stupidity it's hard to have any sympathy for robot soldiers. We've been there before but haven't learned a thing.
"Everyone who knows anything about war or who was over the age of 12 during the Vietnam era knows the info contained in this essay. It is, in a word, redundant."
And what about the ones who don't know much about war, those not over 12 at the time (and still some who were), or who didn't get access to the real information about what was going on?
Big, big mistake to think that this article and this kind of information is redundant. This information needs as many repetitions and oulets as the incidences of war propaganda.
Hedges says, "War allows us to engage in primal impulses we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power of the divine, the power to give or annihilate life." This constitutes a point I have been making often on commondreams: that the notion of DEITY as understood by too many in the West reflects the persona of MARS: god of war.
kadzdzi: It is very unenlightened of you to blame Jesus for the barbarism of his followers! Great masters come to earth and do their best to raise consciousness. What generally happens is that the masses misunderstand the teachings and use them as a basis for punishing (to the point of brutality) outsiders of "the faith." (This harkens back to my point about the use of major team sports to galvanize similar patriotic feelings that send a great many young persons off to wars.)
FD32: Excellent point about the chain of command and ultimate responsibility, especially since soldiers are taught to vehemently to FOLLOW orders and NOT decide/think for themselves.
Kivals: I hope you were being sarcastic, as we can't presume that everyone has the assets, ways or means to get out of the way of bombs dropping at ungodly hours, especially if they are aged, handicapped, poor or mothers nursing babies.
Cruxpuppy: Brilliant point about deconstructing our past legacy of propagandized beliefs. Many shun the use of heaven's circle as a primitive totem, but the wisdom implicit to this model truly offers a basis for transcending the ism-divisions that have torn us apart for centuries; and now bring mankind to the cusp of a level of tragedy that no civilization before us (in scale) has had to countenance.
Poet says, "The real attrocity of war is that it is never over–only in recess until its next malignanacy masticizes into a fresh outbreak." GREAT point, and consistent with the realization that violence ALWAYS begets violence, and why Gandhi said that "an eye for an eye will leave a population blind." (thanks for sharing that)
Kazdi writes:
But, no, he (Holymoly) still believes in that pathetic, antihuman Christ of his. As does Bush, Chenney, Rice, and a billion of Christers on a mission to stamp out sin in the world and make sure that everyone is a deluded Christer. And so they kill and kill and kill.
Boy! That's a lot of folks to stereotype into one lump. "a billion Christers on a mission" so they "kill, kill,kill." Well, it's true that a lot of "Christers" supported this administration (although it's getting harder and harder to find one who admits it); however, to say that all Christers (or a billion of them) want to kill, kill, kill, is, as progressives are want to call it, "hate speech." I would just call it stereotyping myself. Not all muslims, for example, want to kill, kill, kill, but some people make that claim. I, for one, don't believe all muslims want to kill me (or even a billion of them), and as much as I dislike organized religion, I can't go that far about "Christers" as you use the term. While I don't suggest that I can mind rape Chaney, Bush and gang (it would be too much like a sewer) I'd be willing to bet they don't believe in Christ any more than you do--they use Him as a ploy to achieve their purposes. Karl Rove rounded up the Christian evangelical churches for the Republican party like so many sheep to the slaughter--and many good Catholics voted for Bush, too. That, and a little help from Diebold probably decided the last election. Many evangelicals stay in the Republican camp because they think women should never have access to abortion (they should pay for their sexual sins) and think that prayer should be in the public schools (their prayers, of course, but say a Hail Mary! and there will be hell to pay) they see homosexuality as a sin (but conveniently overlook Chaney's family connection). When Christ was asked about the greatest commandment he said to love the Lord with all one's might and the second, he hastened to add, was just like it: to love one's neighbor as oneself. Think of that, he put loving God with equal status of loving one's neighbor. If one did that, one wouldn't want to kill others. How can you kill someone if you love him as much as you love yourself? If you love your neighbor as yourself, how can you make a slave out of him? If you love your neighbor as yourself, how can you steal his wife, or his ox, or anything that is his? If you love your neighbor as yourself, how can you not love his children like you would love your own? How could you send them to war when you would not sacrifice your own? If you loved your neighbor as yourself how could you compete in a blood-thirsty manner against him, rather than helping him if, at all possibe. If that one mandate were to be taken seriously by Christians, the world would be transformed--of course, cut-throat capitalism would go out the window. Can't have that, can we? At the risk of REALLY making Kazdi unhappy with me, I will Bible thump just a little more: I point out that the book of James (Chapter 4 versus 1 thru whereever) states that we war because we lust after things=we fight and war because we lust after the wrong things. Sounds like we are greedy for things we shouldn't be greedy for--hence we are willing to kill for those things we are greedy for. Chaney and Company (does anyone really believe Bush runs anything??) lust after power, oil, and word dominion. Sounds like a really good prescription for war according to the Good Book.
Here is another little talked about subject regarding our troops, whom I fell for, for most must be aware of the lies that put them in this unbelievable mess.
In the first Gulf War, of the approx.500,000 ground troops who served in Iraq, over 325,000 are "permanently disabled" from inhaling DU, (depleted uranium). Du is used in the core of cannon shells and turns to powder when they explode. If any DU lodges in the body, it causes serious medical probems and will also be carried in the male sperm. Over 2/3rds of the children born to the Gulf War vets after they returned home, have serious illnesses and or birth defects. If that does not frighten us, I don't know what on Earth would.
It will be the same fate for the current crop of pawns serving the King, and how many innocent civilians in Iraq have inhaled the poison, which will be dangerous for all life for centuries. The 300 tons or more of DU we scattered around the country of Iraq is still there. (waiting.) God___help us.
holymoly, at least learn to spell the VP's evil name. It's Cheney, not "Chaney." You're confusing him maybe with Lon Chaney, the Hollywood Dracula from the 1920s. Understandable identity confusion, but Dick the Master of War is Cheney.
I admire Hedges journalistic work as it relates to reporting the Middle East, international affairs, and so forth, but his recent stint as an expert on morality and religion is not so impressive. The most compelling--as well as methodical and reasonable--treatment of the moral decline of those doing the battering and those receiving the battering during war and the like is Jonathan Glover's book, HUMANITY: A MORAL HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. As far as trying to redeem something moral from the three Abrahamic religions is concerned, the train has left the station. The practical effects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on human life outweigh any positive wish-image they might present. I am not writing as someone who is so bold to call himself an atheist (a self-righteous, nihilistic moniker in its own right), but I cannot help but argue that exceptionalist orthodoxies of all stripes are far beyond credible or healthy or defensible. In the Abraham triad's case, the constituent members' collective history has taken the liberation out of Judaism, the forgiveness out of Christianity, and the peace out of Islam.
It seems we need to face the fact that we live in a country where about half the population, and most of the people with political power, have little regard for the lives of human beings existing outside our borders. Everyday we see reports of our military killing "suspected terrorists" in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not clear to me if the suspects being killed are eventually confirmed to be terrorists, or whether because they're already dead it becomes a mute point. Whatever the case, it's our young men and women participating as soldiers in the daily killing, and through some convoluted way of perceiving reality a sizable percentage of our citizens approve of the killing, as long as it's foreigners being killed.
The question is what can we do about it?
Pragmatique: There is evidence for scant concern for those within the nation's boundaries, as well. Consider the health care debacle, the minimum wage indentured servitude, and the prison-industrial complex. Our nation practices inhumanity right at home, as all the unfortunate Mexican "illegal aliens" are now realizing.
Blnabors: Very eloquent argument. The Masters truly had a vision to share, which if practiced in the spirit it was given, might have done much to aid mankind and temper its violent divisiveness. But as a construction worker I dated many moons ago explained, the ones who design the buildings (architects) are geniuses; while the ones who must build from those plans, are more muscle than mental wiz kids. (This is not to say men who work with their hands, I happen to like that personally, are not intelligent!)
Ephraim, A little humor here is good for all souls, but I do believe Lon Cheney played the Wolfman. Ahhh, I make worse mistakes in my typig here, but not on purpose.
blnabors,siouxrose and holymoly you are all right. If anyone studies the core teachings of the world's religions from the teachings of their founders,they will find they are about compassion, charity, truthfulness, self-reflection, all the virtues. They all start out as alternative ways of interacting with the world, as a critique of the current mode of thinking and acting. However, as soon as the establishment decides to embrace it the new religion and its founder's teaching are twisted around to become another tool for the government, (the rich and powerful) to enslave the minds of the people. Does anyone seriously believe Jesus would of approved of the Crusades or that any of these Holy Beings support any of our wars? As plantman says all wars are immoral and the only possible justification for a war would be if another country is actually invading your country. That is why my religion teaches to work for social justice, but no involvement in politics, no clery, and independent investigation of truth.
Plantman13, Thanks for your comments. They are provable if one wants to do the research.
Ephraim: Yes, I was supposed to know how to spell Cheney, but it just looks so freakin weird like everything else about him--including his constant snarl. Does it disrespect him to misspell his name? Good. I don't care how it is spelled on an indictment for war crimes. I'll take it any way, shape or form. Out of rememberance to Molly Ivans, they can even list Bush as Shrub.
". Many evangelicals stay in the Republican camp because they think women should never have access to abortion (they should pay for their sexual sins)..."
I know one who should but never will pay. Yes, his name is on the D.C. Madame's client list, yes he WORKS for Haliburton (as we speak), and he shot his friend in the face while HWI (hunting while intoxicated. Any guesses?
Yes typical of modern wars....
You claim to be there to better the situation/help the indigenous people.
Then, the people (all, they look different) become the enemy.
All are fair game to kill.
So why not leave?
Oil/profits/military bases....the real reason we went there.
Thank you, Chris Hedges, for this article. The more you can tell people what you know, the better. Again and again and again. I recall two of your books, both of which I use as sources for those I encounter who know practically nothing. No history, no politics, no current events...sad to say, there are many of them. Yet, I continue to comprehend that it is not "exactly their fault" - they are simply ordinary Americans in this time. Innocent and ignorant.
To those who disparage Chris Hedges's thoughts and experience, I say: READ his books and if you are baffled, bewildered, or incapable of comprehending what he is talking about with a critical mind (I mean by that, the capacity to critique what he's saying -oh, forget that part)...see if you can remember your original spritual training
and give this man credit for, in all ways, attempting to live out his own spiritual life.
Holymoly, you did a good job of pointing out the proper Christian view on war. We cannot judge all Christians, Muslims or any other faith by the actions of a radical few.This also holds true of nations that have been highjacked by power hungry amoral leaders. There are still many great people out there and I believe these discussions are a good start in getting them to open their eyes and do something constructive. Keep up the dialogue, it will work eventually.
"The rage that soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen as supporting the insurgents"
chris hedges seems to imply that supporters of "insurgents" should be killed. and that "insurgents" should be killed goes without saying. and that innocent civilians are those who do not support "insurgents".
i guess he bought the neocon party line inspite of himself.
soldiers are brainwashed to think this way. if they can't think this way they can't be soldiers. but a journalist?
inri porter, Why do you order Siouxrose to go?
Her prose is beautiful, even if one does not fully understand what she is attempting to share with us. There is certainly little but intellect, a search for the truth, caring and love in her writings. We should respect her; what has she ever written that was evil or cruel? Finally, what if she is correct with her beliefs?
I don't seem to recall any stories of WW2 or Korean conflict warriors behaving like they did in Vietnam or everywhere else since. Does it have anything to do with how the conflict started? Who started it? Like the nazis aggressors of WW2 were infamous for such behaviour, they knew who they were the aggressors and they exhulted in their aggresion- cheered on by a civilian population cowed by a corrupt militaristic political leadership.
Thank you Chris Hedges for this piece, and thank you 'holymoly' for your comment. I was a loadmaster on C-141's at the end of Viet-Nam. I was 17 at the time and couldn't figure it out for several years. About fifteen years ago an elderly homeless man, who had flown in from Hawaii to get his SSA, would get highly upset and say all kinds of obscenities when he heard me ministering to someone on the streets . He was camped near me and one day on my way home he called out and wanted me to visit with him. We talked for awhile, then we drank for awhile. Then I finally had the nerve to ask him why he was so angry with God? His reply was very ...well, let's just say it opened my eyes to the real world. He said that in 1959 he was 19 years old, guarding a poppy field in Cambodia for the CIA. I haven't trusted government, politicians, or even law enforcement since. I include law enforcement because I have witnessed the change throughout the years in how law enforcement handles (or mis-handles) the handling of the public. Most of them seem to be x-combat military still wearing uniforms and carrying weapons which have been used to subdue innocent people fighting, no speaking for their constitutional rights. My greatest concerns have been their fear of the public which for the most part have come from their military service. We know who is trying to rule the world, and we have heard Bush Sr. talk about how great the New World Order is going to be when it arrives (find it on you tube). It's already here, we just don't have the rights anymore to do anything about it. We were asleep when it snuck in and slowly took them away in 1946, or '47, with the National Security Act. We didn't listen to the news prophets, the watchmen on the wall, when it was going on. Now we're reaping what we have been sewing for generations. We have become a culture of convenience and are now paying the price, SHAME, our greed brought on by corporate american interest that have destroyed the world in order to gain power through our addictions to comfort. We have no one to blame but ourselves. But don't worry, there is a method to the madness. The watchmen are still on the wall crying out that the enemy is still here, and there, but still no one listens, no one cares enough to take a stand. They would rather concentrate their efforts toward better living regardless of the cost. As a man of God, I felt compelled to say something here, so there it is.
"The study estimated that 655,000 more people than normal have died in Iraq since coalition forces invaded the country in March 2003."
According to a simple calculation, it will take another 25 years for the freedom-loving, democracy-delivering Americans to kill all the Iraqis. At that time the Iraqis will be free of everything—including their liberator Americans.
Amen
Sorry, Whiterose, but the truth is ALL wars contain atrocities by both sides...WWII and Korea included.
The press, however was even more controlled then today
so few of these stories got out. Prisoners were killed after they had surrendered, women were raped regularly,
and countless children were (oops) killed in the line of fire. It is part of the myth of the "good war"
that these things are ignored so the uninformed will follow in their forefather's bloody footsteps. Talk to a German about the war. If 100,000 civilians having the flesh cooked off their bones in one night in the Dresden firestorm is not an atrocity, what is?
riverbottompreacher: Powerful allegory.
Evelyn Smith: Thank you for chivalry, and acting as "the lady's protector."
Inri: It is the fool who argues to maintain their limitations. I never said I was leaving this forum. Anywhere one goes they can log in, or do you not realize the global village that the Internet represents?
thanks for sharing your wisdom riverbottompreacher. the rampant materialism around me makes me think, what vacuum are people trying to fill in their lives that they must always be trying to 'improve' with 'things'. The answers are obvious to a degree: love, community might be a place to start ones inquiry.
I've read two of chris hedges books and want to thank him very much for his superb writing and intelligence. for giving me insight into our present situation here in america. I am just now finishing "American Fascists; The Christian Right and the War on America". This book is a chilling account of this growing problem within our midst. The parallels to Nazism are apparent as Hedges outlines so brilliantly. The cult like mentality of the dominionist church is absolutely eye opening. Its ability to close off any discussion is really Orwellian. The way this church has grown and has been able to wield so much power in government and military circles is really unsettling. The chapter on the christian rights insistence on the literal interpretation of the bible, the creation of the earth in 6 days for example, is almost laughable in the face of scientific knowledge. and yet,a growing number of schools now teach creationism as a fact!
the culture of atrocity is deeply influenced by the hard rights confusion and mysticism . so I recommend this book as to getting know what we're up against, a formidable enemy indeed but one that needs to be put in their place as a minority opinion.
plantman, you are right when you say ALL wars contain atrocities by both sides...there is no such thing as a clean war, or a good war, such as WW11. Combat brings out the worse actions in a human being, and unless we, as INDIVIDUALS, first, stop glorifying the military in every country on Earth, legalized murder, also know as war, will continue. PEACE in the world starts first, within me, and you, and every other being on the planet. WE MUST CONTROL OUR THOUGHTS! As Zarathustra said thousands of years ago...GOOD THOUGHTS, GOOD WORDS, GOOD DEEDS.