As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.

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Hedges likens war to an addiction, the high of which is all-consuming. A sustained superbowl weekend of tribal bonding, adrenaline rushes, sex, and violence. A placed stalked by the losers of peacetime-petty thieves and thugs who understand domination as a matter of force and terror. War, Hedges concludes, forms a central part of the human condition. He notes that "the historian Will Durant calculated that there have only been twenty-nine years in all of human history during which a war was not underway somewhere." From a historical sweep humans have never stopped fighting. It is a very disturbing revelation.

But individuals, tribes, villages, city-states, empires, and nations have all witnessed both peace and war. And perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Hedges's narrative is trying to figure out why we ever stop fighting. For the only answer that he provides as to why we stop fighting is that we simply become bored by the slaughter. When killing becomes too routine it loses its luster and bogs down. And when it loses its luster, and we see it plainly, we are like a wife-beater who is temporarily sickened and ashamed. In the damaged faces of the innocents we can find no sustainable reasoning or meaning.

Hedges argues that Americans were temporarily sickened and ashamed by the Vietnam war. But now that our collective memory has faded and new generations have been raised on the elixir of paranoid patriotism, our willingness to wage war has been revitalized. The nation with more weapons of mass destruction than any other nation on earth-than any nation in the history of mankind-is primed by this force that gives us meaning. No doubt about it, those mothers and fathers on the cover of the book were New Yorkers. Our New Yorkers. We shall have our retribution. They kill us, we will kill them.

Hedges is a warrior, he is not a pacifist. Hedges is addicted to war and he knows it and he hates it. But he believes that somehow, some way, love is the answer. "To survive as a human being is possible only through love." Continuing, he somewhat clumsily argues, "It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures." Hedges knows war much better than he knows love, but it is a start. Particularly a start for a nation that does not understand war.

199 of 222 found the following review helpful:

In Love With WarOct 05, 2002

Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for many years, covering the various wars and insurgencies in Central America, North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. This book is not so much a memoir (although Hedges draws deeply on his own experience) as it is a meditation on the effects of war and of the nationalist myths that often provide a basis for war -- how easy it is to be caught up by the myth of the hero, of noble sacrifice, of the utter depravity (inhumanity) of the enemy (the Other), and how difficult it is to recover from the inevitable disillusionment when the terror of war, the collapse of morality and the essential humanity of the Other is revealed. Hedges is at his best in discussing the aftermath of war -- the collective forgetting as history and memory are erased, lest the survivors be forced to face what they have done. Yet it is only by recovering the truth, acknowledging guilt and seeking reconciliation that society can begin to heal and move forward.

Hedges' message is an important one as we rush headlong into war, particularly for all who demonize the "axis of evil" without acknowledging the role we have played in creating the despair and rage that have turned men and women into terrorists. As Hedges shows, it is difficult for non-combatants to resist the national myth, to penetrate behind the approved rhetoric, to waver from the absolute, unquestioning patriotism demanded by the state. But some must do so if we are to keep our moral compass and begin to heal the world (i.e., to address the despair felt by both sides).

Although the message is strong, there are a few weaknesses in this book. Hedges tends to over-generalize based on his experiences in the Balkans, characterizing all war as though it involved marauding packs of criminals (otherwise known as militias). The Persian Gulf War, while certainly displaying many of the mythic elements necessary to any war, was either about freedom for the Kuwaitis or about access to oil -- and was certainly about power -- but in any event does not seem to have involved the kind of wanton depredation on the civilian population common to the Balkans and (to a more limited extent) the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although the book is short, it does get repetitive after a while, as Hedges hammers home his points about what war does to (and for) us. We also lose contact to some extent with Hedges' personal experience, as he comes to focus more on the experiences of others as the book progresses, and the book loses some of the immediacy it had at the beginning.

Overall, a very worthwhile (and quick) read for anyone concerned about our future as we rush into the war on terror.

119 of 132 found the following review helpful:

�War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing..."Sep 05, 2002
By Richard Wells
Chris Hedges in his memoir and cri de coeur, "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning," has given us a gift of experience, heartbreak, and wisdom that should be required reading for every young adult who may some day have to face a nation's jingoism and drive to war; and every adult who has ever thought war glorious, necessary, or worth the blood of a nation's youth. His curriculum vitae are impressive. He served as a correspondent in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Sudan, the Punjab, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo covering foot soldiers and street fighters; and when he writes of the bloodshed, carnage, horror, and waste of war, he knows of what he writes.

In seven chapters Mr. Hedges takes us through a study of war that is somehow as thrilling as it is simultaneously repugnant, both scholarly and illustrative, his thesis is that war is an addiction that kills, if not the body, certainly the soul of every participant even as it gives a weird pleasure, or meaning to living.

Mr. Hedges is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, and a student of the classics at Harvard in 1998-1999 as a Neiman Fellow, and he brings both a strong ethic and a classicist's knowledge of the great books to his memoir. He's also a hell of a writer.

This is easily a five star book. It has the power to change the way you think, and in that, the power to save lives. Five stars, and three cheers!

37 of 38 found the following review helpful:

Book Speaks What Usually Remains UnspokenDec 30, 2002
By Benjamin Pawlik
Growing up in the in the 60's and 70's, nearly everyone's father was a military veteran. It was easy to identify the veterans of actual combat because they, like my father, rarely spoke of their war experiences - as opposed to the non-combat veterans who endlessly gave us their own stories. When the combat veterans did speak, it was typically cryptic, often evasive, and obviously very disturbing for them to recount.

"The effectiveness of the myths peddled in war is powerful. We often doubt our own perceptions. We hide these doubts, like troubled believers, sure that no one else feels them. We feel guilty. The myths have determined no only how we should speak, but how we should think. ...we have trouble expressing our discomfort because the collective shout has made it hard to give words to our thoughts."

The author breaks this stifled silence of the veterans, and expresses the intoxication and horrors that all war brings to its participants. By truthful revelation of real war, the reader can more actively and intelligently examine his own feelings and actions in the face of the troubles we face today. Read this book. The topics and history contained within have been covered elsewhere many times, but the author eloquently pieces together the common threads among the wars of the 70's, 80's and 90's into a narrative that allows the reader to accept that each new war is not a just unique exercise in patriotism or battle against evil. War is just war, and assumes a life of its own regardless of its sometime noble origin.

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