Table of Contents | One of the most disturbing and unsettling books I have read recently is entitled War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. It was written by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent who has covered wars for more than 20 years. This book isn't the rantings of an ivory tower academic. He has covered wars in El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq and elsewhere. He has been imprisoned, beaten by military police and attacked by death squads. His perspective deserves to be taken seriously and soberly. This writing is neither a diatribe against war nor an argument for pacifism. His claim is that he "wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it. It is especially important that we who wield such massive force across the globe see within ourselves the seeds of our own obliteration. We must guard against the myth of war and the drug of war that can, together, render us as blind and callous as some of those we battle." He points out how, rashly and quickly, only three days after 9/11, the Congress granted the President the right "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks." The resolution was passed unanimously by the Senate and with only one dissenting vote, from Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, by the House of Representatives. She warned that military action could not guarantee the safety of the country and, "as we act, let us not become the evil we deplore." He sets down the basic premise of the book with these words. "The enduring attraction of war is that it can give us what we long for in life, even with its destruction and carnage. It can give us purpose, meaning and a reason for being. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised north African immigrants in France and even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal...." Before I could recover from his assault on my ill-informed conscience, I remembered how evangelical religion has given sanction and certitude to the war in Iraq. This haunting word of Sam Ross, a paratrooper wounded in Iraq (quoted in Mother Jones and taken from Utne, September-October, 2004 issue), is a vivid testimony to the truth of his thesis. "I lost my left leg, just below the knee. Lost my eyesight....I have shrapnel in pretty much every part of my body. Got my finger blown off...I had a hole blown through my right leg....It hurts a lot, that's about it. You know, not really anything major. Just little things....It was the best experience of my life." Then I remembered the thesis of Jesus Against Christianity: Reclaiming the Missing Jesus wherein Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer traces the stories of land thievery, genocide and violence that are found in the Hebrew scriptures. "They cascade," he contends, "from biblical texts like waterfalls after a violent storm." Where does that leave me? Humbled and troubled. But there is more. Regina Schwartz argued in her book The Mark of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism that there is an inherent violence in the three monotheistic traditions. Again, I shudder when I recall that Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote, "The principle of the movement is whoever is not included is excluded, whoever is not with me is against me, so the world loses all the nuances and pluralistic aspects that have become too confusing for the masses." These striking words have been repeated, in various forms, for generations. Is this viewpoint behind President Bush's exaggerated rhetoric about the war on terrorism? Arendt's words are the precise ones that President Bush uses over and over again. If so then what is the role of religion when it sees the world as the domain of one human familly, not divided into those who are for us and those who are against us? Hedges is surely right when he asserts, "The only antidote to ward off self-destruction and the indiscriminate use of force is humility and, ultimately, compassion. Reinhold Niebuhr aptly reminded us that we must all act and then ask for forgiveness. This book is not a call for inaction. It is a call for repentance." I wonder. I honestly wonder. Is the present administration, composed of so many neo-conservatives who have dreamed of invading Iraq for years, up to the task of preventing conflict and seeking alternatives to war? Does the lust for oil motivate the administration of George W. Bush? Is their vision of the future dependent on this need for purpose and meaning that war gives? Bill Moyers notes that Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, even has a plaque on his desk that validates this possibility about war. It reads, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." Moyers asserts, "I don't think so. War may sometimes be a necessity; to treat it as sport is obscene....There's nothing in the Constitution that says it's permissible for a great nation to launch a pre-emptive attack against a captive nation. Unprovoked, the 'noble sport of war' becomes the murder of the innocent." (1) The words of Notre Dame professor Virgilio Elizondo in A God of Incredible Surprises: Jesus of Galilee speak for me as well as to the neo-conservatives in Bush's administration who seem to find meaning in war. It's the idea that "someone would love so much that he would give his life rather than take someone else's....He triumphed not by defeating violence with greater violence...but by continuing to love regardless of the violence inflicted upon him. This was a new and unsuspected force...." In that force I place my trust. In that force is the hope of this entire cosmos. |