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`War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning` by Chris Hedges

p Running head : War is a force that gives us meaning

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War is a force that gives us meaning

War , when we confront it truthfully , exposes the darkness within all of us . This darkness shatters the illusions many of us hold not only about the human race but also about ourselves . Few of us confront our own capacity for evil , but this is especially true in wartime . And even those who engage in combat are afterward given cups from the River Lethe to forget

. And with each swallow they imbibe the myth of war . For the myth makes war palatable . It gives war a logic and sanctity it does not possess . It saves us from peering into the darkest recesses of our own hearts . And this is why we like it . It is why we clamor for myth . The myth is enjoyable , and the press , as is true in every nation that goes to war , is only too happy to oblige . They dish it up and we ask for more

War as myth begins with blind patriotism , which is always thinly veiled self-glorification . We exalt ourselves , our goodness , our decency , our humanity , and in that self-exaltation we denigrate the other . The flip side of nationalism is racism--look at the jokes we tell about the French . It feels great . War as myth allows us to suspend judgment and personal morality for the contagion of the crowd . War means we do not face death alone . We face it as a group . And death is easier to bear because of this . We jettison all the moral precepts we have about the murder of innocent civilians , including children , and dismiss atrocities of war as the regrettable cost of battle . As I write this article hundreds of thousands of innocent people , including children and the elderly , are trapped inside the city of Basra in southern Iraq--a city I know well--without clean drinking water . Many will die . But we seem because we imbibe the myth of war , unconcerned with the suffering of others

Yet , at the same time , we hold up our own victims . These crowds of silent dead--our soldiers who made "the supreme sacrifice " and our innocents who were killed in the crimes against humanity that took place on 9 /11--are trotted out to sanctify the cause and our employment of indiscriminate violence . To question the cause is to de the dead Our dead counts . Their dead does not . We endow our victims , like our cause , with righteousness . And this righteousness gives us the moral justification to commit murder . It is an old story

In wartime we feel a comradeship that , for many of us , makes us feel that for the first time we belong to the nation and the group . We are fooled into thinking that in wartime social inequalities have been obliterated . We are fooled into feeling that , because of the threat , we care about others and others care about us in new and powerful waves of emotion...

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