War: Realities and Myths (C Hedges)

[katty]

cont'd: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hedges.php?articleid=6294

Chris Hedges has been a war reporter for 15 years most recently for the New York Times. He is author of What Every Person Should Know About War, a book that offers a critical lesson in the dangerous realities of war. He's also author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
War: Realities and Myths

by Chris Hedges

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with words of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war.

The vanquished know the essence of war – death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.

But the words of the vanquished come later, sometimes long after the war, when grown men and women unpack the suffering they endured as children, what it was like to see their mother or father killed or taken away, or what it was like to lose their homes, their community, their security, and be discarded as human refuse. But by then few listen. The truth about war comes out, but usually too late.

[Tom Joad]

1. For Bay Area folks: check this out.

http://www.zaytuna.org/eventDetails.asp?id=60

Venue: Martin Luther King Jr Middle School Auditorium
1781 Rose Street / Berkeley, CA 94704-1180 / Free off-street parking

Timings: Doors Open - 6PM / Reception/Book-signing - 6:15-6:45PM / Program - 7PM

Admission: Free
Featured speakers: Chris Hedges & Hamza Yusuf

Have the teachers of our religions failed us? Or have we not been listening? From leaders of America's Christian Right seemingly forgetting that "Blessed are the Peacemakers," to Jewish rabbis watching unflinchingly as collective punishment is doled out to Arabs in Palestine, to Muslim jurists ruling that civilian victims are acceptable under a Just War, the three great Abrahamic faiths are increasingly facing accusations of ignoring the sanctity of life. Some, pointing perhaps to Malcolm X when he famously advised a group of black nationalists to, "Leave your religion at home," are not surprised, believing religion is best at dividing, not uniting; others argue, often just as persuasively, that this new penchant the religious have for the immediacy of violent solutions is bred from ideas other than those rooted in sound religious tradition. The same Malcolm X, after all, boldly argued from Mecca that only a belief in the Oneness of God could harmonize a discordant America. Can our current leaders-and some of us-achieve a similar understanding?

And so, does religion offer a way toward reconciliation? Or has it instead become part of the problem? Please join us for an enlightening conversation between two teachers worth listening to: Pulitzer Prize-winner and National Book Award-finalist Chris Hedges and the distinguished American-Muslim thinker and theologian, Hamza Yusuf.