Judging by the title, you might think that this books speaks in favor of war. Absolutely not! In fact, it is a very powerful condemnation of war.
The author had led an eventful life. He was a war correspondent who covered many conflicts in many parts of the world. He had seen his share of death, had many close calls and suffered human cruelty. This book is his attempt to understand the appeal of war. Despite universal condemnation of war (at least in principle), war has always been and still is a presence in human affairs. It continues to fascinate us and even attracts us. Why? If war is so wicked, why does it persist?
Sure, there are some psychopaths out there who like war because it gives them a chance to indulge their darkest desires and achieve power, but the blame cannot be solely laid at the feet of few madmen. The sad fact is that war really does have its attractive qualities.
"Truth is the first casualty of war," as the saying goes.
That is true. The rulers need to first sell war to their people. Even the most totalitarian regimes do not start war out of the blue. Elaborate propaganda operation is first mounted to convince us that the enemy is evil, or at least in some way worse than us. People with whom we had no quarrel before suddenly become our enemy. They are portrayed as wicked and inferior. Differences, no matter how small and irrelevant, are brought up time after time as evidence of their otherness. Whatever bad things a few of them did, they are used to condemn all of them as evil. Some of these differences and bad deeds are no doubt true, but propaganda exaggerates them and even manufactures more if what is out there is not enough.
At the same time, propaganda tries to convince us that we are the good guys and superior to the enemy. In other words, we are on the side of angels and they fight for Satan. In case of religious wars, this might literally be the official position.
Quite often it is not enough to say that the other side is evil and inferior. They must also pose a grave threat. After all, if they were evil and inferior, but meant us no harm, then most people would not care enough to travel over there and fight them. But if they pose a threat to us, then not only we have a right to fight them, we even have a duty to. A man has to protect his country and loved us after all.
Strangely, while individuals might resist propaganda, the masses often fall for it. There is powerful allure in accepting the propaganda. If we believe the lies, then suddenly we become heroes fighting the good fight against forces of darkness. We protect our loved ones from a wicked enemy. We see friends and neighbors support a cause and we feel the pull to join them to gain a sense of belonging. The psychological need to fit with a group and to be accepted is a powerful human desire.
For those who are directly exposed to combat, aside for the horror and fear there is also excitement. The fight or flight response kicks in and our bodies are flooded with adrenaline. Even fear has its exciting properties. How else do you explain people enjoying horror movies?
Soldiers experience intense comradeship and are often and are held as heroes. It is hard to be exposed to this kind of adoration and not have your ego flattered. Civilians feel a bond with their fellow civilians if their side is winning. If their side is losing and they are exposed to violence, this bond grows even stronger as they must together endure hardship and death.
War has its dark attractiveness, but it is also a lie. It is like heroin. It makes you feel fantastic when you are under its influence, but at the same time it is destroying you. Eventually it will leave you a pathetic, sad shadow of what you were, and then it will kill you.
War inverts values. What was once good is now bad and vice versa. Showing kindness and protecting human lives is generally speaking considered as a virtue. But in war showing kindness and protecting the lives of the people on the other side is almost a crime. War dissenters (who are essentially people who say that you should not hurt fellow human beings and look for peaceful solutions) are vilified and called traitors. They might be charged with crimes, imprisoned and even killed. On the other hand, people who kill, maim and hurt the enemy and destroy their property are made to look heroic. What before was rightfully called mass murder and criminality, now is the desired behavior.
When the war is over, when the lies are exposed, silence and fantasy reign supreme. As people realize the evil and foolishness in which they indulged, they become ashamed and prefer to keep quiet about it. Not only people don't want to talk about it, they prefer not to hear about it. When some few brave individuals speak out, they are ignored. When there is no way to hide the truth, the evil is excused. Atrocities committed by our own side are written off as ugly necessities of war or laid at the feet of few "bad apples". And it is quickly pointed out that the enemy committed atrocities too. Apparently, their evil justifies our evil.
But the silence is not enough. The society is faced with a problem. The old lies don't work anymore, but the truth is too painful to face. So new lies are invented. People replace old fantasy with new fantasy. Generals might say that they lost the war because politicians stabbed them in the back. Politicians might say that it was the country's allies who stabbed them in the back. Or the other side had won because they "cheated". (As if war was a sport with set rules.)
This new fantasy prevents healing on both sides, thus sowing the seeds for the next conflict. While the current generation might have learned its lessons, those lessons are not passed down to the new generation. New generations grow up believing the fantasies, and one day they will march to war.
This is, grossly, the author's thesis, although sometimes he does not lay it out as clearly. The book is written purely from heart and emotion. The impression from the text I got is that this is an emotional outburst and purging of a troubled soul. This is fine by me. It makes the book only more powerful. I have read some anti-war books in the past, but never anything so powerful.
I have only one complaint. The author grimly states that in his opinion there will always be war (I agree) and that sometimes wars are necessary. But he does not elaborate on what he would consider a justifiable war. Taking into account how strongly anti-war his book is, it would be interesting to know in what circumstances he would approve of war.
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David B. Ellis
Chris Hedges, former war correspondent, current prophet and prolific author, tells truth to power
Reviewed in Canada on October 26, 2020
