War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Summer 2003 by Dowd, James J

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges. New York: Public Affairs, 2002. 211 pp. $23.00 (cloth).

Nominated for a 2003 National Book award in nonfiction, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning is the account of a journalist's experience covering the world's wars, large and small, since the early 1980s. Beginning with El Salvador during the early Reagan years and ending with the American efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, Chris Hedges reported from war zones around the world for the New York Times. Although this is not a work of sociological analysis, Hedges does produce a theoretically provocative account of the violence, cruelty, and licentious behavior that is endemic to all wars. His central thesis is that people, whether soldiers, journalists, or ordinary citizens, are repulsed by the horror of war but drawn to it as a respite from the boring routine of everyday life. For soldiers and journalists, war infuses their lives with meaning: they are engaged in important, life-endangering work far removed from the safety and ambivalence of life during peacetime. For many civilians caught up in armed conflict, the usual norms controlling human behavior and limiting violence, both real and symbolic, weaken to the point of irrelevance. Similar to the thrill of pornography or reality television, which allows the viewer to witness behavior strongly proscribed in the wider community, war tears away the curtain of civility, allowing us to view scenes of shocking brutality and wickedness. Some become participants in the mayhem; others merely watch, voyeurs of the murders, rapes, and tortures committed by others.

Hedges isn't a pacifist, nor does he consider all war to be wrong. He believes that the U.S. intervention in Kosovo was justified and necessary, and our late intervention in Bosnia should have been much earlier. War even creates the possibility of heroic, noble acts. More likely, however, it demeans the participants as it weakens their capacity to be shocked by what they see. When wars begin, we are all eager for the action to begin and for our beloved nation to emerge victorious, perhaps even to be commemorated in the manner of Shakespeare's tribute to Henry V with his rousing St. Crispin's day speech. But for most, war involves the unremembered deaths of multitudes and lonely, unheroic and unchivalrous efforts merely to survive. Rather than Henry V, Hedges recommends Troilus and Cressida for a more realistic appraisal of behavior in battle.

War, and only war, satisfies the passionate yearning that exists in every society for a cause that exalts the people of a nation. This is a difficult proposition to accept, and yet one is left with the sense that Hedges is probably right. It is difficult to think of any other cause that might serve as well to exalt and solidify a people. The spirit of what he terms "triumphal nationalism" engulfs the participants in war and ensures their willing cooperation with the state in its efforts to dominate a neighboring group. There are exceptions, however, as Hedges narrates the story of a poor Muslim farmer, Fadil Fejzic, whose cow provided the precious milk that nourished a Serbian child during the siege of Gorazde in 1992.

Many of those who are most enthusiastic about war are the isolated, atomized individuals who "before war came, were profoundly alone and unloved. They found fulfillment in war, perhaps because it was the closest they came to love." For Hedges, the thrill of death provided by war can only be balanced by love. War may provide meaning, but Hedges realizes that "to live only for meaning - indifferent to all happiness - makes us fanatic, selfrighteous, and cold." This is a lesson worth remembering as we contemplate the coming wars of the 21st century.

Reviewed by James J. Dowd

Department of Sociology

University of Georgia, Athens