In the oscar winning film "The Hurt Locker" the first words , rather like the quotations of Herodotus in "The English Patient" are from Chris Hedges 2002 Book.Herein lies a paradox in the interpretation and therefore conclusions of the work which even the Author has straddled from inception to the changing scenery of War from a highly visual 3-dimensional video game making war into a armchair playstation type game into todays litany and picking over of various "failed" military objectives.
At first sight the Book can be seen as giving solace to a pessimistic view that War is always with us because it is part and parcel of the Human make-up.The average man will demand it sooner or later and his thirst must be quenched.The notion which Hedges unwittingly allows into the process is that the pressure for war is bottom led in society and , sooner or later , those at the top will have to oblige to release the pressure valve so as to control the process and give the baser orders what they crave whilst strengthening the elites position as to conduct and fall-out.
It will be seen this paradoxical view of looking at war as a base necessity for a base desire is not one that Chris Hedges ascribes to at all , but it does have to be pointed out that this Book does give comfort for those who follow this cynical view of Human need.
One question which rightly nags away is in the areas where Chris describes the raging Battles and the requisite inferred "addiction" in the post WW2 zones such as Gaza ; the Balkans ; Iraq is whether , using the addiction to conflict argument the wars in these regions are because the local populace are nourishing a satiation from them or , as a political geographer would likely conclude it is unhealthy outside , external contingency which fuels conflicts which could be readily resolved if left to the devices of the local Peoples without external power block mischief.
"War is a pornography of violence" states the author , describing the essential difference on page 166 we are told Gray wrote " between comradeship and friendship consists , it seems to me, of the heightened awareness of the SELF in friendship and the suppression of self-awareness in comradeship."
The earlier part of the Book deals with the "addiction" of journalists to war-situations rather than the desire of the population in war zones to prolong the process for fear of transfer to a stable non-War existence , the lack of clear differentiation between the two within the Book is where a paradox interpretation is allowed to develop.
As the Book progresses , as also the "case" for war on Iraq was being fought out in the media and political platforms laying partizan siege on the beleaguered civilians Hedges clear anti Iraq War credentials come to the fore in unambiguous terms.At last he realises that modern wars are foisted by the elite entrenched groups on a population that is unwilling to go to Conflict for reasons less than absolute national necessity , so much so , that millions of dollars of private and public finances had to be pumped into the most heavily resourced propaganda campaign in Human History to record even a slight , short-lived , public majority for a war which only a minority of the elite wanted.
Hedges quotes Milan Kundera " the struggle of one man against power.Is the struggle of the memory against forgetting".
Below Chris Hedges set the record unequivocally straight between understanding the "addiction" for war by society and knowing when an unrepresentative elite is trying to take society into the disastrous war for highly suspect and spurious reasons:
Check out especially at the 5 min 5 sec mark his desription of how liberals have lost touch with the working man and like the characters in Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground they aspire to speak the language of the working man whilst falling full square behind the agenda of the corporate elite , all in the name of progress.
Turning attention to how to address ending Conflicts Chris on page 130 sees much value in the type of conflict-resolution processes as the South African Truth and reconciliation Process , deeming it necessary.The reason for this is set on page 133 " the lack of closure tortures and deforms those who wait for an answer....it must be rectified if healing is to take place.".This commission processes are essential because they allow macro and individual victims of War to come to terms with what has happened and to begin the collective endeavour to heal the pain and cure the wounds in order to rectify the past in order to be able to plot a better future.
Admonishing those bitter-enders that still clamour to bring about a war using false propaganda and scaremongering tactics we see on page 146 " It is hard , neigh impossible, to fight a war if the cause is viewed as Bankrupt".The result of the increasing desperate propagation's for continuation of unpopular wars is " the notion that one fact is as good as the next" becomes " one of the most disturbing consequences of War".We can be laid by degrees and extremes of wanting War in order to "aid" the eradication of cultural practices , so we now have some advocating Nato troops being in Afghanistan because it may do the Womanfolk their good , without explaining how fully armed Nato soldiers are to be considered a positive role model for the betterment of female liberation any more so than soldiers of the Armies of Alexander the Great can be considered a worthy intervention for womanhood in the cities they sacked in the same areas 3 millennium ago, rather than the prevention of genocide , which is one of the few cases of war Hedges is prepared to countenance.
The last , and not least , concern is the damage done to the foreign soldier on the ground in a zone in which the hearts and minds of the local population have not been remotely won.On page 162 we get the observation we see in increasing veracity at home " War...probably worse is the psychiatric and spiritual toll" , that is of those poor combatants who return from a tour of duty without any physical wounds." In the 1973 war a third of all Israeli casualties were due to psychiatric causes"
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