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The Greatest Evil is War
An unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war by one of our finest war correspondents.
Drawn from experience and interviews by Pulitzer-prize-winner Chris Hedges, this book looks at the hidden costs of war, what it does to individuals, families, communities and nations.
In fifteen short chapters, Chris Hedges astonishes us with his clear and cogent argument against war, not on philosophical grounds or through moral arguments, but in an irrefutable stream of personal encounters with the victims of war, from veterans and parents to gravely wounded American serviceman who served in the Iraq War, to survivors of the Holocaust, to soldiers in the Falklands War, among others. Hedges reported from Sarajevo, and was in the Balkans to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 2002 he published War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning , which the Los Angeles Times described as “the best kind of war journalism… bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical” and the New York Times called “a brilliant, thoughtful, timely, and unsettling book.” In the twenty years since, Hedges has not wanted to write another book on the subject of war—until now, with the outbreak of war in Ukraine. It is important again to be reminded who are the victors of the spoils of war and of other unerring truths, not only in this war but in all modern wars, where civilians are always the main victims, and the tools and methods of war are capable of so much destruction it boggles the mind. This book is an unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war by one of our finest war correspondents.
Drawn from experience and interviews by Pulitzer-prize-winner Chris Hedges, this book looks at the hidden costs of war, what it does to individuals, families, communities and nations.
In fifteen short chapters, Chris Hedges astonishes us with his clear and cogent argument against war, not on philosophical grounds or through moral arguments, but in an irrefutable stream of personal encounters with the victims of war, from veterans and parents to gravely wounded American serviceman who served in the Iraq War, to survivors of the Holocaust, to soldiers in the Falklands War, among others. Hedges reported from Sarajevo, and was in the Balkans to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 2002 he published War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning , which the Los Angeles Times described as “the best kind of war journalism… bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical” and the New York Times called “a brilliant, thoughtful, timely, and unsettling book.” In the twenty years since, Hedges has not wanted to write another book on the subject of war—until now, with the outbreak of war in Ukraine. It is important again to be reminded who are the victors of the spoils of war and of other unerring truths, not only in this war but in all modern wars, where civilians are always the main victims, and the tools and methods of war are capable of so much destruction it boggles the mind. This book is an unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war by one of our finest war correspondents.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published August 23, 2022
62 people are currently reading
1120 people want to read
About the author
Chris Hedges
58 books1,944 followersChristopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies.
Hedges is known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
Hedges is known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
July 8, 2022
Chris Hedges DOESN’T want you for the army in his latest polemic, The Greatest Evil is War. I’d say now’s a salient time for something like this to come out but, unfortunately, there’s always a war going on somewhere, it’s just that the Russia/Ukraine conflict happens to serve Western political interests and that’s why it’s getting front page news rather than highlighting the genocide in Yemen being enacted by Saudi Arabia (an American ally) or the horrendous things the Israelis (an American ally) are doing to the Palestinians or actual Nazi-level shit the Chinese (an important trading partner to the West) are doing to the Uyghurs, putting them in concentration camps and allegedly sterilising them, aka ethnic cleansing.
I think Chris Hedges is brilliant - the world needs more voices like his - but I won’t pretend that I was all that taken with this book. Not because I disagree with anything he has to say, but because of the opposite: I agreed with everything he had to say about the horrors of war and so it was a bit uninteresting seeing him make a lot of very obvious (to me) points without making me think of new ways about the subject.
He bookends the polemic by focusing on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, which is informative and might be enlightening to anyone who hasn’t read up on the reasons behind it, though I doubt Hedges is the only person in the media to point out that it’s ultimately because of American arms companies wanting to make a profit.
And that’s basically how I feel about the book: it’s Hedges making a lot of arguments that have been made before to an audience I can’t quite picture. Would anyone who was gung-ho for war pick up a Chris Hedges book? And for those who are Hedges fans like me, are there any likely to be pro-war?
Which isn’t to say it’s a boring read - it’s not, and it’s sometimes riveting in a morbid way. Hedges was a war correspondent for many years and recounts the atrocities he saw firsthand in Bosnia and Kosovo. He talks about “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, criticises America for its effects in the Middle East (among other areas), and focuses on the individuals whom war directly affects thanks to the reckless actions of the Pentagon and other “pimps of war”. Like the heartbreaking tale of Tomas Young, a soldier paralysed in Iraq in 2004 and who later committed suicide to escape from the unending pain of his injuries.
This isn’t a reason against it but it took me a while to get through this relatively short book because some episodes are so bleak that I needed time to get over them before moving on. I imagine reading this in one sitting or straight through quickly can only lead to profound misery at what nightmares humanity unleashes upon itself so consistently.
Still, it’s an important book for numerous reasons, not least for highlighting the sickening hypocrisies of how American society is built around war. Like the way so much foreign aid is earmarked for spending on American munitions that no doubt leads to so much of the conflict abroad, or how much of American manufacturing is tied to weapons creation. And then there are the films that propagate a heroic aspect of the military without showing you the victims of war, from the physically and mentally damaged veterans, abandoned by their government after being used, to the piles of corpses strewn around the world, most of them innocent civilians.
It’s also crucial for showing anyone thinking of joining the military a clear picture of what they’re letting themselves in for. There’s a haunting chapter on army medics tasked with dealing with the remains of US soldiers, the family members dealing with the loss of their loved ones, and extensive descriptions of wounds sustained by conflict. In this way, Hedges’ book is as relevant as another book he references, the American attorney Harold Shapiro’s 1937 book, What Every Young Man Should Know About War, which talks about the lasting effects of combat on soldiers and was, quite tellingly, banned prior to America’s involvement in WW2.
Hedges didn’t need to include a chapter on the Holocaust, even though, yes, of course it’s apropos because that was a consequence of war, I just think it’s overkill (maybe not the right word) in a book that so thoroughly dismantles any pro-war argument a reader might have.
The Greatest Evil is War is a tough read, for the subject matter, because Hedges is an excellent writer, and it’s an important book too - for me though, there’s only so much confirmation bias I can read before losing interest, and parts of the book were a struggle to get through for that alone.
I think Chris Hedges is brilliant - the world needs more voices like his - but I won’t pretend that I was all that taken with this book. Not because I disagree with anything he has to say, but because of the opposite: I agreed with everything he had to say about the horrors of war and so it was a bit uninteresting seeing him make a lot of very obvious (to me) points without making me think of new ways about the subject.
He bookends the polemic by focusing on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, which is informative and might be enlightening to anyone who hasn’t read up on the reasons behind it, though I doubt Hedges is the only person in the media to point out that it’s ultimately because of American arms companies wanting to make a profit.
And that’s basically how I feel about the book: it’s Hedges making a lot of arguments that have been made before to an audience I can’t quite picture. Would anyone who was gung-ho for war pick up a Chris Hedges book? And for those who are Hedges fans like me, are there any likely to be pro-war?
Which isn’t to say it’s a boring read - it’s not, and it’s sometimes riveting in a morbid way. Hedges was a war correspondent for many years and recounts the atrocities he saw firsthand in Bosnia and Kosovo. He talks about “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, criticises America for its effects in the Middle East (among other areas), and focuses on the individuals whom war directly affects thanks to the reckless actions of the Pentagon and other “pimps of war”. Like the heartbreaking tale of Tomas Young, a soldier paralysed in Iraq in 2004 and who later committed suicide to escape from the unending pain of his injuries.
This isn’t a reason against it but it took me a while to get through this relatively short book because some episodes are so bleak that I needed time to get over them before moving on. I imagine reading this in one sitting or straight through quickly can only lead to profound misery at what nightmares humanity unleashes upon itself so consistently.
Still, it’s an important book for numerous reasons, not least for highlighting the sickening hypocrisies of how American society is built around war. Like the way so much foreign aid is earmarked for spending on American munitions that no doubt leads to so much of the conflict abroad, or how much of American manufacturing is tied to weapons creation. And then there are the films that propagate a heroic aspect of the military without showing you the victims of war, from the physically and mentally damaged veterans, abandoned by their government after being used, to the piles of corpses strewn around the world, most of them innocent civilians.
It’s also crucial for showing anyone thinking of joining the military a clear picture of what they’re letting themselves in for. There’s a haunting chapter on army medics tasked with dealing with the remains of US soldiers, the family members dealing with the loss of their loved ones, and extensive descriptions of wounds sustained by conflict. In this way, Hedges’ book is as relevant as another book he references, the American attorney Harold Shapiro’s 1937 book, What Every Young Man Should Know About War, which talks about the lasting effects of combat on soldiers and was, quite tellingly, banned prior to America’s involvement in WW2.
Hedges didn’t need to include a chapter on the Holocaust, even though, yes, of course it’s apropos because that was a consequence of war, I just think it’s overkill (maybe not the right word) in a book that so thoroughly dismantles any pro-war argument a reader might have.
The Greatest Evil is War is a tough read, for the subject matter, because Hedges is an excellent writer, and it’s an important book too - for me though, there’s only so much confirmation bias I can read before losing interest, and parts of the book were a struggle to get through for that alone.
September 2, 2022
Every generation has someone who truly understands the horror of war, and tries to warn us all. And always to no avail. How could it be otherwise when just 30 years after the Civil War, the soon to be president, Teddy Roosevelt, said “What this country needs is a good war.” And went looking for one. He found several. Despite Stephen Crane’s universally lauded The Red Badge of Courage, it only took 30 years for the horror of the Civil War to be forgotten, and war itself to become an attraction to would-be warriors once again.
There is a brain defect that makes people forget what their grandparents tell them about war. They think it is honorable, glorious, heroic, and even fashionable. They say it builds men. In the Civil War, families dressed in their Sunday best and flocked to picnics overlooking the battlefield to enjoy the show, and compliment their family’s soldiers afterward. At least that was the intention, until the hell of noise, from guns, cannons, horses, and men in agony took center stage. The bloodletting interrupted the picnics. The spectators fled, and the country settled in for several years of horror. Without picnics.
In 1914, young Americans flocked across the border to Canada, which was already involved in World War I because it was a member of the British Commonwealth, and the US was “neutral”. They enlisted with grand enthusiasm. The stories of the trench wars, shooting deserters and would-be deserters, and all the permanently maimed or gassed soldiers returning home to nothing, did not have much effect, as a new and improved war began less than 20 years later, killing 75 to 90 million more.
This era’s anti-war scribe is Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who has written The Greatest Evil Is War. It is eloquent and forceful, brimming with immediacy. This is far from the first time he has written about it. He had been a war correspondent for two decades, and has seen it all up close and personal, narrowly escaping death, having his friends and co-workers killed beside him, and trekking through the stench and endless blood of pointless conflicts all over the world. “I was beaten by Iraqi and Saudi police. I was taken prisoner by the Contras in Nicaragua, who radioed back to their base in Honduras to see if they should kill me, and again in Basra after the first Gulf War in Iraq, never knowing if I would be executed, under constant guard and often without food, drinking out of mud puddles.” And all for the New York Times.
This also makes his book a very visceral, stomach-churning read. Hedges makes unarguable point after unarguable point in very personal terms. For Hedges, this is as romantic as war gets: “Legs blown off. Heads imploded into a bloody, pulpy mass. Gaping holes in stomachs. Pools of blood. Cries of the dying, sometimes for their mothers. And the smell. The smell of death. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots.”
War changes everyone who participates in it. Civilians die and are injured far more than soldiers, and more of their families are victims. But soldiers see more action and suffer accordingly. And none of them ever forgets. Hedges says 22 US veterans commit suicide every day. They famously suffer from PTSD, the current name for an incurable mental state described in every major war going back to ancient Rome.
The book has a chapter on veterans back home. The hypocrisy of “Thank you for your service” shows up whenever a veteran turns out to be anti-war as a result of that service. The thanks turn to insults and abuse. The natural hatred of Americans comes to the fore when war is criticized. The country is euphoric over war and the military, despite the bad results continually posted by both.
It gets so twisted that a soldier who was depressed over his coming deployment to Iraq asked for anti-depressants (as a majority of soldiers now take) and was required by the doctor to see the chaplain first. The chaplain told the soldier: ”I think you will be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.” This is the morality of war. You will be doing God’s work killing the people we’re liberating. This particular soldier ended up a quadriplegic and died at the age of 43, following two decades of agony and suffering. Hedges devotes a chapter to him and even helped him write a last letter - to President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who sealed his doom over precisely nothing.
The military is right in there pushing and shoving. Hedges cites the Office of the Surgeon General’s Textbook of Military Medicine, which even deals with fatal exposure to nuclear radiation. It specifies that even though they are terminally ill, such soldiers should receive any and all medication, including narcotics “to prolong their utility … The soldier must be allowed to make the full contribution to the war effort.”
The book divides into short chapters, focusing on some horrific aspect or another. There’s a chapter on corpses, and one featuring a female US marine whose job it was to pack and ship bits of body parts and personal effects back to the family. Dressed in a hazmat suit, she would proceed to landmine explosion sites to collect all the debris that could be determined to be human. Where she could not get to, others would send them to her for transshipment. She had to get out when she received a large bag of heads, eyes wide open, staring up at her. There’s a chapter on killing, the wholesale slaughter of the Vietnamese Americans there to defend them, and one on the differences between worthy and unworthy victims. He interviews a Holocaust survivor about her story of surviving imminent death several times, losing all of her family along the way. And there is a chapter on permanent war, as promoted by the military and its industrial contractors. These are neverending wars no one ever wins. They keep getting added to world maps as various regimes attack their own or the nearby. They are lifetime business opportunities for American profiteers.
He accurately describes some in government as Dr. Strangeloves, always eager to send others to their deaths or at very least, ruined lives. And despite continuing convictions for corruption and fraud, the same military contractors come back for more and bigger contracts, supplying not just arms but services, replacing government soldiers with a civilian contractors. It is just a business – a nearly trillion dollar annual feast. Hedges points out how the bloated military budget ($850 billion), which achieves little or nothing for society, crowds out social services and infrastructure projects because the country is constantly on a war footing. No matter the cause, these contractors are the only real gainers in war. He says their stocks rise at the mere mention of it.
He also has it in for the West, reneging on its deal with Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward from Germany if Russia did not interfere with the reunification of that country. NATO is now attempting to encircle western Russia by admitting Ukraine as well as all the Baltic states it agreed to leave alone. This is precisely why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. He clearly could not allow this to go on. He said so specifically. I pointed this issue out in a piece a month before the invasion, and it resulted in the most criticism I have ever received, including threats to me personally. Despite my being against the invasion, as Hedges is. So I have a small inkling of how Hedges feels about being anti-war in the USA.
But Hedges has seen it for himself: “There is no such thing as getting used to combat. Everyone in combat eventually reaches a breaking point, from the most sensitive and the most cowardly to the hardest combat veteran. Combat is a form of psychological and physical torture. Once you break down, as I did in the last war I covered in Kosovo, all appeals to duty, honor, patriotism and manliness are useless. After 60 days of combat 98% of surviving soldiers are psychiatric casualties.” Hedges himself was fired from the New York Times for opposing the soon-to-be war in Iraq. That’s all it took in the bloodlust country that claims freedom and liberty above all else.
In answer to Teddy Roosevelt, Hedges cites Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis, saying “The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus. Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way.” It is based on a self-centered, amoral lack of knowledge or insight. The book’s message is to never romanticize war. It jeopardizes people for the wrong reason or no reason, and the outcome is always negative. If you think war is a worthy opportunity to look forward to, this is your book.
David Wineberg
(The Greatest Evil Is War, Chris Hedges, September 2022)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
There is a brain defect that makes people forget what their grandparents tell them about war. They think it is honorable, glorious, heroic, and even fashionable. They say it builds men. In the Civil War, families dressed in their Sunday best and flocked to picnics overlooking the battlefield to enjoy the show, and compliment their family’s soldiers afterward. At least that was the intention, until the hell of noise, from guns, cannons, horses, and men in agony took center stage. The bloodletting interrupted the picnics. The spectators fled, and the country settled in for several years of horror. Without picnics.
In 1914, young Americans flocked across the border to Canada, which was already involved in World War I because it was a member of the British Commonwealth, and the US was “neutral”. They enlisted with grand enthusiasm. The stories of the trench wars, shooting deserters and would-be deserters, and all the permanently maimed or gassed soldiers returning home to nothing, did not have much effect, as a new and improved war began less than 20 years later, killing 75 to 90 million more.
This era’s anti-war scribe is Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who has written The Greatest Evil Is War. It is eloquent and forceful, brimming with immediacy. This is far from the first time he has written about it. He had been a war correspondent for two decades, and has seen it all up close and personal, narrowly escaping death, having his friends and co-workers killed beside him, and trekking through the stench and endless blood of pointless conflicts all over the world. “I was beaten by Iraqi and Saudi police. I was taken prisoner by the Contras in Nicaragua, who radioed back to their base in Honduras to see if they should kill me, and again in Basra after the first Gulf War in Iraq, never knowing if I would be executed, under constant guard and often without food, drinking out of mud puddles.” And all for the New York Times.
This also makes his book a very visceral, stomach-churning read. Hedges makes unarguable point after unarguable point in very personal terms. For Hedges, this is as romantic as war gets: “Legs blown off. Heads imploded into a bloody, pulpy mass. Gaping holes in stomachs. Pools of blood. Cries of the dying, sometimes for their mothers. And the smell. The smell of death. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots.”
War changes everyone who participates in it. Civilians die and are injured far more than soldiers, and more of their families are victims. But soldiers see more action and suffer accordingly. And none of them ever forgets. Hedges says 22 US veterans commit suicide every day. They famously suffer from PTSD, the current name for an incurable mental state described in every major war going back to ancient Rome.
The book has a chapter on veterans back home. The hypocrisy of “Thank you for your service” shows up whenever a veteran turns out to be anti-war as a result of that service. The thanks turn to insults and abuse. The natural hatred of Americans comes to the fore when war is criticized. The country is euphoric over war and the military, despite the bad results continually posted by both.
It gets so twisted that a soldier who was depressed over his coming deployment to Iraq asked for anti-depressants (as a majority of soldiers now take) and was required by the doctor to see the chaplain first. The chaplain told the soldier: ”I think you will be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.” This is the morality of war. You will be doing God’s work killing the people we’re liberating. This particular soldier ended up a quadriplegic and died at the age of 43, following two decades of agony and suffering. Hedges devotes a chapter to him and even helped him write a last letter - to President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who sealed his doom over precisely nothing.
The military is right in there pushing and shoving. Hedges cites the Office of the Surgeon General’s Textbook of Military Medicine, which even deals with fatal exposure to nuclear radiation. It specifies that even though they are terminally ill, such soldiers should receive any and all medication, including narcotics “to prolong their utility … The soldier must be allowed to make the full contribution to the war effort.”
The book divides into short chapters, focusing on some horrific aspect or another. There’s a chapter on corpses, and one featuring a female US marine whose job it was to pack and ship bits of body parts and personal effects back to the family. Dressed in a hazmat suit, she would proceed to landmine explosion sites to collect all the debris that could be determined to be human. Where she could not get to, others would send them to her for transshipment. She had to get out when she received a large bag of heads, eyes wide open, staring up at her. There’s a chapter on killing, the wholesale slaughter of the Vietnamese Americans there to defend them, and one on the differences between worthy and unworthy victims. He interviews a Holocaust survivor about her story of surviving imminent death several times, losing all of her family along the way. And there is a chapter on permanent war, as promoted by the military and its industrial contractors. These are neverending wars no one ever wins. They keep getting added to world maps as various regimes attack their own or the nearby. They are lifetime business opportunities for American profiteers.
He accurately describes some in government as Dr. Strangeloves, always eager to send others to their deaths or at very least, ruined lives. And despite continuing convictions for corruption and fraud, the same military contractors come back for more and bigger contracts, supplying not just arms but services, replacing government soldiers with a civilian contractors. It is just a business – a nearly trillion dollar annual feast. Hedges points out how the bloated military budget ($850 billion), which achieves little or nothing for society, crowds out social services and infrastructure projects because the country is constantly on a war footing. No matter the cause, these contractors are the only real gainers in war. He says their stocks rise at the mere mention of it.
He also has it in for the West, reneging on its deal with Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward from Germany if Russia did not interfere with the reunification of that country. NATO is now attempting to encircle western Russia by admitting Ukraine as well as all the Baltic states it agreed to leave alone. This is precisely why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. He clearly could not allow this to go on. He said so specifically. I pointed this issue out in a piece a month before the invasion, and it resulted in the most criticism I have ever received, including threats to me personally. Despite my being against the invasion, as Hedges is. So I have a small inkling of how Hedges feels about being anti-war in the USA.
But Hedges has seen it for himself: “There is no such thing as getting used to combat. Everyone in combat eventually reaches a breaking point, from the most sensitive and the most cowardly to the hardest combat veteran. Combat is a form of psychological and physical torture. Once you break down, as I did in the last war I covered in Kosovo, all appeals to duty, honor, patriotism and manliness are useless. After 60 days of combat 98% of surviving soldiers are psychiatric casualties.” Hedges himself was fired from the New York Times for opposing the soon-to-be war in Iraq. That’s all it took in the bloodlust country that claims freedom and liberty above all else.
In answer to Teddy Roosevelt, Hedges cites Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis, saying “The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus. Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way.” It is based on a self-centered, amoral lack of knowledge or insight. The book’s message is to never romanticize war. It jeopardizes people for the wrong reason or no reason, and the outcome is always negative. If you think war is a worthy opportunity to look forward to, this is your book.
David Wineberg
(The Greatest Evil Is War, Chris Hedges, September 2022)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
October 15, 2022
How many Americans at a major sports event, understand that the US military under the National Defense Authorization Act can now, not only surveil everyone in that stadium, but can “snatch anyone in the stands and hold him or her indefinitely in a military facility”? No charge or trial needed. Instead of getting an out-of-tune rendition of God Bless America, today’s targeted sports goer can just get a rendition. This in the “land of freedom and liberty.” Today’s shameless military displays at sporting events “is priming the population to accept military rule and a form of fascism or proto-fascism.”
“Pre-emptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime.” The invasion of Ukraine (just like the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam) is under post-Nuremberg laws, a criminal act of aggression, but “Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed and angry.” Why? Chris (and many others I’ve read) believe Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if the Minsk peace agreement was properly implemented, and also recognize Russia had been clearly betrayed by the US backtracking on its clear promise to never expand NATO one inch east.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to give us a peace dividend and a switch finally from military to social Keynesianism. However, from President Clinton onward, the US betrayed Russia, breaking its promise by consciously encircling Russia closer with NATO neighbors and actual NATO missiles now 100 miles away from Russia itself. This is a new Cold War that exists just because of who it profits, the war industry. The Cold War makes commercial sense; war is very lucrative. But, “the war state needs enemies to sustain itself. When an enemy can’t be found, an enemy is manufactured.” Permanent war demands “elevating ourselves as saviors and casting whomever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader.”
Celebrities carefully orchestrate their image; appear bold but don’t be too bold. While the US was killing scores of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Clooney goes to Darfur to accuse Khartoum of war crimes. Worthy vs. non-worthy victims = Any Ukrainian victim is worthy, any Yemeni, Palestinian or Kashmiri victim is unworthy (of mentioning or feeling for). Coal companies dealt with labor by dividing it to conquer. Baseball teams were financed to pit towns against each other “to help fracture the labor movement”. The ruse worked great with workers focused now instead on team loyalty. The same ruse works great today; focus on the players you see but never on the players behind the scenes.
In WWII, a Marine wrote of another Marine who had a fixation with “urinating into the mouths of Japanese corpses”. Such a veteran could win as a Republican governor today with those creds. To combat climate change, Jeff Bezos has the largest yacht in the world – 57 feet longer than a football field. A bargain at $500 million. During the Civil War, “Maine, per capita sent more men to war than any other Northern state.” After Gettysburg, the residents enjoyed covering their mouths and noses when venturing outside. The stench of many dead men of course was pungent, however you had to factor in the joy of also 5,000 horse and mule carcasses.
Chris on liberal institutions hypocritically banning Russian artists: Imagine two decades ago US Opera Stars, athletes and musicians being banned if they didn’t publicly do an oath against George Bush and condemn the blatant Iraq invasion (a war crime just like Putin’s). Sergey Lavrov peddled the same nuclear fear lies about the Ukraine invasion (and war crime) that Condi Rice did with the Iraq invasion (another war crime). Before the Ukraine invasion, the media platform RT was a rare window into US dissent, and so the US shut it down. Challenge the dominant narrative and be silenced.
In Vietnam, the US dropped 70 million tons of herbicide agents, and 3 million rockets “tipped with white phosphorus” (burns your skin to the bone – a war crime) and 400,000 tons of jellied incendiary napalm. That will teach them for wanting to choose their own government. “It was not out of the ordinary for US troops in Vietnam to blast a whole village or bombard a wide area in an effort to kill a single sniper.” In the first Gulf War, the US bombed water purification systems, power stations, bridges, and (no doubt in the name of Jesus bombed) schools and hospitals. Progressives: all victims are worthy. Liberals: Not all victims are worthy, All Ukrainian victims are worthy, but good luck finding any of us concerned about Palestinian, or Yemeni victims or thinking they are worthy of public discussion.
Raising paranoia to a new level, in March 2022, Elliot Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote that the US doesn’t have enough military strength. Donald Trump to his credit, called the invasion of Iraq “a big fat mistake.” See, it does take one to know one. Indonesian killers working at US bidding in the 60’s found that beating prisoners to death meant blood spurting everywhere and “it smelled awful.” New means (like shoving “wood in their anus until they died”) were then developed. “The military’s inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people.” What a laudable goal; intentionally LOSING hearts and minds while pretending to gain them, just to keep yourself in business like a Mobius strip.
“I was inflicting violence on the poorest people on earth. How is there any morality in that?” Good question. “The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is about self-worship.” Today’s suicide rate among veterans is twenty-two a day. The Army: Why kill yourself at a dead-end job? Work for us first, then you can go kill yourself.
“We were essentially bullies.” “Busting in these doors, you’re taking Grandma and throwing her against the wall. I began asking myself, what the hell am I doing?” Any young man who has a weapon is deemed a possible insurgent. Meanwhile, any young man in the US possessing a weapon is laughably deemed a patriot ready to protect his family. “The worst trauma is often caused not by what combat veterans witnessed but by what they did. The moral injury.” “On some days it was shoot anything in sight. Then it would be about hearts and minds. Giving stuff to schools that were blown to bits.” “I remember soldiers chucking C-ration cans at the heads of kids.” What a perfect thing to put on the Jumbotron during breaks in a Football game, to help enlistment - Be all you can be.
“I never get used to the Fourth of July. As soon as I hear the boom sound [of the fireworks], the war comes. Even the bang of a door brings it back.” Veterans and dogs hate it, no wonder this land of patriotism annually demands it. “The hardest thing to write about is love, it comes across as sappy. This inability to write about love is part of the pathology of war. Writing about war is easy.” “Hey, Chaplain, how come it’s a sin to hop in bed with a mama-san but it’s okay to blow away gooks in the bush?” Why get draconian on the Bible’s bits about sexual misconduct and then intentionally disrespect, “thou shalt not kill?”
One eighteen-year-old kid atop an armored Humvee, sees a car coming at him pretty fast and pours 200 rounds into it in less than a minute. “it killed the mother, a father, and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.” Seeing “gruesome” pictures of the resultant death scene, a colonel says to his full-division staff, “If these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.”
One soldier summed it up, “I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people, the only thing that ended up mattering was myself and the guys I was with.” “Soldiers stole food and valuables from the houses as families, including children, watched, huddled in fear. The behavior of the soldiers enraged Iraqis and fueled their insurgency.” “A lot of guys really supported the whole concept that, you know, if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they are not as human as us, so we can do what we want.” After being intentionally treated like shit in basic training, there is a strong desire to then intentionally treat someone else like shit. “It’s fun to shoot shit up.” Said a soldier. “The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us, led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population that was supporting them.” “Take a picture of me and this motherfucker,” one of the soldiers said while putting his arm around the corpse. “Damn, they really fucked you up, didn’t they?” the soldier laughed.
One soldier gets visually upset recalling when a fellow soldier shot off a dog’s jaw for barking. No punishment of the shooter ever happened. “Militarized culture attacks all that is culturally defined as the feminine, including love, gentleness, compassion and acceptance of difference.” During Marine basic training you were humiliated if you were overweight or physically unable, you were forced to exercise until you threw up or collapsed. Marines keep a copy of Rules of Engagement in their left breast pocket. When a Marine tattooed their vital info under an armpit, it was called a meat tag. After a Marine killed himself, “we sent the suicide notes home with the bodies.” “It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up, they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh.” A Marine died in a lake: “His neck was as wide as his bloated head, and his testicles were the size of cantaloupes. He looked like a movie prop.” “We opened it (body bag) up and it was filled with heads. I looked at four before looking away.”
When military recruiters approach you at age 16, they cater to your insecurities, dreams, and economic deprivation. A doctor told a recruit, “I think you’ll be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.” Chris calls the Iliad, “the great book on war” and the Odyssey, “the great book on the long journey to recovery by professional soldiers.” “those with whom veterans have most in common when the war is over are often those they fought.” One soldier wrote graffiti that said, “Please God forgive the lives I took” and next to it another soldier wrote in thick black marker: “Fag!!” with an arrow pointing to the first comment.
Woodrow Wilson himself later admitted that WWI had been fought for business interests. Lloyd George said, “If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they can’t, and don’t know.” “Military studies have determined that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of those who survive will have become psychiatric casualties.” Lt. Col. David Grossman suggests “the other 2% were crazy when they got there.”
The latest proxy war in Ukraine means billions of dollars for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northup Grumman and the usual suspects. There’s no monetary incentive for the US to negotiate peace in Ukraine. Look for yourself at what happened to all these US military companies’ stocks after the Russian invasion. “The point is not who is being fought. The point is maintaining a state of fear and the mass mobilization of the public.” What a great book, and a terrific primer on the effects of endless US war, by Chris.
“Pre-emptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime.” The invasion of Ukraine (just like the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam) is under post-Nuremberg laws, a criminal act of aggression, but “Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed and angry.” Why? Chris (and many others I’ve read) believe Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if the Minsk peace agreement was properly implemented, and also recognize Russia had been clearly betrayed by the US backtracking on its clear promise to never expand NATO one inch east.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to give us a peace dividend and a switch finally from military to social Keynesianism. However, from President Clinton onward, the US betrayed Russia, breaking its promise by consciously encircling Russia closer with NATO neighbors and actual NATO missiles now 100 miles away from Russia itself. This is a new Cold War that exists just because of who it profits, the war industry. The Cold War makes commercial sense; war is very lucrative. But, “the war state needs enemies to sustain itself. When an enemy can’t be found, an enemy is manufactured.” Permanent war demands “elevating ourselves as saviors and casting whomever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader.”
Celebrities carefully orchestrate their image; appear bold but don’t be too bold. While the US was killing scores of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Clooney goes to Darfur to accuse Khartoum of war crimes. Worthy vs. non-worthy victims = Any Ukrainian victim is worthy, any Yemeni, Palestinian or Kashmiri victim is unworthy (of mentioning or feeling for). Coal companies dealt with labor by dividing it to conquer. Baseball teams were financed to pit towns against each other “to help fracture the labor movement”. The ruse worked great with workers focused now instead on team loyalty. The same ruse works great today; focus on the players you see but never on the players behind the scenes.
In WWII, a Marine wrote of another Marine who had a fixation with “urinating into the mouths of Japanese corpses”. Such a veteran could win as a Republican governor today with those creds. To combat climate change, Jeff Bezos has the largest yacht in the world – 57 feet longer than a football field. A bargain at $500 million. During the Civil War, “Maine, per capita sent more men to war than any other Northern state.” After Gettysburg, the residents enjoyed covering their mouths and noses when venturing outside. The stench of many dead men of course was pungent, however you had to factor in the joy of also 5,000 horse and mule carcasses.
Chris on liberal institutions hypocritically banning Russian artists: Imagine two decades ago US Opera Stars, athletes and musicians being banned if they didn’t publicly do an oath against George Bush and condemn the blatant Iraq invasion (a war crime just like Putin’s). Sergey Lavrov peddled the same nuclear fear lies about the Ukraine invasion (and war crime) that Condi Rice did with the Iraq invasion (another war crime). Before the Ukraine invasion, the media platform RT was a rare window into US dissent, and so the US shut it down. Challenge the dominant narrative and be silenced.
In Vietnam, the US dropped 70 million tons of herbicide agents, and 3 million rockets “tipped with white phosphorus” (burns your skin to the bone – a war crime) and 400,000 tons of jellied incendiary napalm. That will teach them for wanting to choose their own government. “It was not out of the ordinary for US troops in Vietnam to blast a whole village or bombard a wide area in an effort to kill a single sniper.” In the first Gulf War, the US bombed water purification systems, power stations, bridges, and (no doubt in the name of Jesus bombed) schools and hospitals. Progressives: all victims are worthy. Liberals: Not all victims are worthy, All Ukrainian victims are worthy, but good luck finding any of us concerned about Palestinian, or Yemeni victims or thinking they are worthy of public discussion.
Raising paranoia to a new level, in March 2022, Elliot Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote that the US doesn’t have enough military strength. Donald Trump to his credit, called the invasion of Iraq “a big fat mistake.” See, it does take one to know one. Indonesian killers working at US bidding in the 60’s found that beating prisoners to death meant blood spurting everywhere and “it smelled awful.” New means (like shoving “wood in their anus until they died”) were then developed. “The military’s inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people.” What a laudable goal; intentionally LOSING hearts and minds while pretending to gain them, just to keep yourself in business like a Mobius strip.
“I was inflicting violence on the poorest people on earth. How is there any morality in that?” Good question. “The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is about self-worship.” Today’s suicide rate among veterans is twenty-two a day. The Army: Why kill yourself at a dead-end job? Work for us first, then you can go kill yourself.
“We were essentially bullies.” “Busting in these doors, you’re taking Grandma and throwing her against the wall. I began asking myself, what the hell am I doing?” Any young man who has a weapon is deemed a possible insurgent. Meanwhile, any young man in the US possessing a weapon is laughably deemed a patriot ready to protect his family. “The worst trauma is often caused not by what combat veterans witnessed but by what they did. The moral injury.” “On some days it was shoot anything in sight. Then it would be about hearts and minds. Giving stuff to schools that were blown to bits.” “I remember soldiers chucking C-ration cans at the heads of kids.” What a perfect thing to put on the Jumbotron during breaks in a Football game, to help enlistment - Be all you can be.
“I never get used to the Fourth of July. As soon as I hear the boom sound [of the fireworks], the war comes. Even the bang of a door brings it back.” Veterans and dogs hate it, no wonder this land of patriotism annually demands it. “The hardest thing to write about is love, it comes across as sappy. This inability to write about love is part of the pathology of war. Writing about war is easy.” “Hey, Chaplain, how come it’s a sin to hop in bed with a mama-san but it’s okay to blow away gooks in the bush?” Why get draconian on the Bible’s bits about sexual misconduct and then intentionally disrespect, “thou shalt not kill?”
One eighteen-year-old kid atop an armored Humvee, sees a car coming at him pretty fast and pours 200 rounds into it in less than a minute. “it killed the mother, a father, and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.” Seeing “gruesome” pictures of the resultant death scene, a colonel says to his full-division staff, “If these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.”
One soldier summed it up, “I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people, the only thing that ended up mattering was myself and the guys I was with.” “Soldiers stole food and valuables from the houses as families, including children, watched, huddled in fear. The behavior of the soldiers enraged Iraqis and fueled their insurgency.” “A lot of guys really supported the whole concept that, you know, if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they are not as human as us, so we can do what we want.” After being intentionally treated like shit in basic training, there is a strong desire to then intentionally treat someone else like shit. “It’s fun to shoot shit up.” Said a soldier. “The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us, led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population that was supporting them.” “Take a picture of me and this motherfucker,” one of the soldiers said while putting his arm around the corpse. “Damn, they really fucked you up, didn’t they?” the soldier laughed.
One soldier gets visually upset recalling when a fellow soldier shot off a dog’s jaw for barking. No punishment of the shooter ever happened. “Militarized culture attacks all that is culturally defined as the feminine, including love, gentleness, compassion and acceptance of difference.” During Marine basic training you were humiliated if you were overweight or physically unable, you were forced to exercise until you threw up or collapsed. Marines keep a copy of Rules of Engagement in their left breast pocket. When a Marine tattooed their vital info under an armpit, it was called a meat tag. After a Marine killed himself, “we sent the suicide notes home with the bodies.” “It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up, they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh.” A Marine died in a lake: “His neck was as wide as his bloated head, and his testicles were the size of cantaloupes. He looked like a movie prop.” “We opened it (body bag) up and it was filled with heads. I looked at four before looking away.”
When military recruiters approach you at age 16, they cater to your insecurities, dreams, and economic deprivation. A doctor told a recruit, “I think you’ll be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.” Chris calls the Iliad, “the great book on war” and the Odyssey, “the great book on the long journey to recovery by professional soldiers.” “those with whom veterans have most in common when the war is over are often those they fought.” One soldier wrote graffiti that said, “Please God forgive the lives I took” and next to it another soldier wrote in thick black marker: “Fag!!” with an arrow pointing to the first comment.
Woodrow Wilson himself later admitted that WWI had been fought for business interests. Lloyd George said, “If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they can’t, and don’t know.” “Military studies have determined that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of those who survive will have become psychiatric casualties.” Lt. Col. David Grossman suggests “the other 2% were crazy when they got there.”
The latest proxy war in Ukraine means billions of dollars for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northup Grumman and the usual suspects. There’s no monetary incentive for the US to negotiate peace in Ukraine. Look for yourself at what happened to all these US military companies’ stocks after the Russian invasion. “The point is not who is being fought. The point is maintaining a state of fear and the mass mobilization of the public.” What a great book, and a terrific primer on the effects of endless US war, by Chris.
November 7, 2022
for those who thought skinny jeans were the greatest evil, you're about to be dumbstruck.
January 25, 2023
"Everything created by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future; it will leave no trace."
—Vasily Grossman
I'm a bit conflicted on how to rate The Greatest Evil Is War. I came across the book by chance, and admittedly, I didn't know what to expect from it - as this is my first book from the author. As a documentary on the horrors of war, it is an important book. As for the political commentary that the author unfolds here - well, that's a different story...
Author Christopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. He has covered numerous wars and conflicts throughout the world for over 20 years. Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
Chris Hedges:
The author is a polarizing one; as people from both sides of the political spectrum have launched attacks on his views over the years. He is a self-described socialist and anarchist. (Oh boy...)
I will refrain from commenting on the author's personal political opinions outside the scope of what he presents here, for the sake of the authenticity of this review.
The book is a long-form treatise against warfare; in general. Along the way, the author covers some of the horrific experiences from his professional career, while in the field of these conflicts.
He bookends his writing here with commentary on the 2022 Russian invasion of the Ukraine:
He talks about his experiences as a war correspondent:
Although war and warfare, in general, is a long contentious issue, I will note that Hedges' prose here is extremely emotionally laden. The entire book reads like a long-form rant. IMHO, the writing would have had more impact if it just presented factual data, instead of virtually yelling at the reader to get its point across.
Likely the emotional tone of the book results from the fact that Hedges is admittedly suffering from PTSD due to the horrors of war he witnessed over his long career. The stories he tells here are absolutely stomach-turning; to be sure. A window into his fractured and damaged psyche is provided at the end of the book, in its coda. I've covered the quote for the sake of this review's brevity:
Personally speaking, my politcal inclinations began to form in the early 2000s, when I was in my early 20s. The primary reason that I identified with the political left was that the political right were imperial war hawks and "nation builders." Post 9/11 saw America invade Afghanistan first, and then Iraq in 2003 after that. I was (and still am) strongly opposed to interventionist wars in the Middle East. A good case could be made that these wars were the worst foreign policy blunders that the US ever made.
A case could also be made for a direct causal chain linking those wars with the destruction of aforementioned Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Lybia and Syria after (with hundreds of thousands dead), on to the creation of ISIS, and then the 2015 migrant crises after. A crisis that resulted in millions of people fleeing their war-torn homes to make their way to Europe, and the resulting chaos - including horrific acts of terrorism - that inevitably results from importing millions of people from polar opposite regressive cultures into the free liberal democratic countries of the west...
So, I can get on board with Hedges' opposition to US imperialism and pro-war nation building, and the spreading of "freedom and democracy" to a group of people who don't want or appreciate those values in the first place...
Unfortunately, Hedges extends his criticism of warfare and neo-con nation-building, to a broad-based incrimination of the entire country and core ethos of America, and even the West; more broadly. He says that there are "no just wars," including WW2. That's not a nuanced informed view.
In fact, the book is absolutely replete with inflammatory, emotionally-laden jargon and snide commentary. He liberally tosses around the terms "Fascist" and "proto-Fascist" to describe America without any seeming concern for the accuracy of applying those labels to a country that was founded on the principles of individual liberty and freedom... Rhetoric like this is more the rantings of the ideologically possessed than it is an objective, nuanced examination of factual data and the telling of history.
It seems that Hedges doesn't realize that the modern-era United States and Russia have not been the only countries/cultures/societies in the world to embark on wars of conquest in order to acquire land, and resources, and/or protect their spheres of influence.
For better or worse - mankind has been a warring creature since prehistoric times. Even before we evolved to become homo sapiens. Humans from all backgrounds, races, groups, tribes, and cultures have embarked on the wanton killing of their fellow man - for various reasons over time. Violence and tribal warfare are coded within our genetic makeup, and have been that way since time immemorial...
One only needs to study a chimpanzee troop to see how deeply the proclivity for horrific violence runs in our evolutionary biology.
Finally, although warfare is (of course) horrific, and the stories here are very hard to read, the good news is that (despite what the average person may perceive) rates of violent death have been steadily and consistently trending downwards for at least the last 200 years, including the 20th century, that saw two world wars with millions dead. Steven Pinker wrote a few books about this: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and Enlightenment Now.
So, yes warfare is terrible, and the millions of dead are an unimaginable tragedy - but fortunately the rates of death from it have been, and continue to trend downwards. Statistically speaking - there has never been a time or place more peaceful than life in the modern-day world.
******************
The Greatest Evil Is War was a mixed bag for me... While I'll agree with a lot of the premise of the book; that warfare is horrific, inhumane, and nightmarish, I will stop short of the broad-based indictment of Western values and American patriotism that Hedges launches here. This is not to say that the modern military-industrial complex is above criticism. It definitely is deserving of criticism, and a healthy critique of modern warfare and the possible motivations for any war are absolutely essential in striving for global peace. And we should do our best to carefully critique these motivations.
Sadly, this book doesn't really provide that. It is absent of both nuance and context. It is more of an ideological partisan piece; from a mind trying to deal with horrific PTS. It is ultimately not really much more than a fairly low-resolution, ground's eye view of warfare, that fails to bring a much-needed top-down perspective of global power struggles and realpolitik to bear.
I would not recommend it.
2 stars.
—Vasily Grossman
I'm a bit conflicted on how to rate The Greatest Evil Is War. I came across the book by chance, and admittedly, I didn't know what to expect from it - as this is my first book from the author. As a documentary on the horrors of war, it is an important book. As for the political commentary that the author unfolds here - well, that's a different story...
Author Christopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. He has covered numerous wars and conflicts throughout the world for over 20 years. Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City.
Chris Hedges:
The author is a polarizing one; as people from both sides of the political spectrum have launched attacks on his views over the years. He is a self-described socialist and anarchist. (Oh boy...)
I will refrain from commenting on the author's personal political opinions outside the scope of what he presents here, for the sake of the authenticity of this review.
The book is a long-form treatise against warfare; in general. Along the way, the author covers some of the horrific experiences from his professional career, while in the field of these conflicts.
He bookends his writing here with commentary on the 2022 Russian invasion of the Ukraine:
"Putin has become, in the words of Senator Angus King, the new Hitler, out to grab Ukraine and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. The full-throated cries for war, echoed shamelessly by the press, are justified by draining the conflict of historical context, by elevating ourselves as the saviors and casting whomever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader."
He talks about his experiences as a war correspondent:
"These ideologues did not see the corpses of their victims. I did. Including children. Every dead body I stood over in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Gaza, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen or Kosovo, month after month, year after year, exposed their moral bankruptcy, their intellectual dishonesty, and their sick bloodlust. They did not serve in the military. Their children do not serve in the military. But they eagerly ship young American men and women off to fight and die for their self-delusional dreams of empire and American hegemony. Or, as in Ukraine, they provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry and logistical support to sustain long and bloody proxy wars."
Although war and warfare, in general, is a long contentious issue, I will note that Hedges' prose here is extremely emotionally laden. The entire book reads like a long-form rant. IMHO, the writing would have had more impact if it just presented factual data, instead of virtually yelling at the reader to get its point across.
Likely the emotional tone of the book results from the fact that Hedges is admittedly suffering from PTSD due to the horrors of war he witnessed over his long career. The stories he tells here are absolutely stomach-turning; to be sure. A window into his fractured and damaged psyche is provided at the end of the book, in its coda. I've covered the quote for the sake of this review's brevity:
Personally speaking, my politcal inclinations began to form in the early 2000s, when I was in my early 20s. The primary reason that I identified with the political left was that the political right were imperial war hawks and "nation builders." Post 9/11 saw America invade Afghanistan first, and then Iraq in 2003 after that. I was (and still am) strongly opposed to interventionist wars in the Middle East. A good case could be made that these wars were the worst foreign policy blunders that the US ever made.
A case could also be made for a direct causal chain linking those wars with the destruction of aforementioned Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Lybia and Syria after (with hundreds of thousands dead), on to the creation of ISIS, and then the 2015 migrant crises after. A crisis that resulted in millions of people fleeing their war-torn homes to make their way to Europe, and the resulting chaos - including horrific acts of terrorism - that inevitably results from importing millions of people from polar opposite regressive cultures into the free liberal democratic countries of the west...
So, I can get on board with Hedges' opposition to US imperialism and pro-war nation building, and the spreading of "freedom and democracy" to a group of people who don't want or appreciate those values in the first place...
Unfortunately, Hedges extends his criticism of warfare and neo-con nation-building, to a broad-based incrimination of the entire country and core ethos of America, and even the West; more broadly. He says that there are "no just wars," including WW2. That's not a nuanced informed view.
In fact, the book is absolutely replete with inflammatory, emotionally-laden jargon and snide commentary. He liberally tosses around the terms "Fascist" and "proto-Fascist" to describe America without any seeming concern for the accuracy of applying those labels to a country that was founded on the principles of individual liberty and freedom... Rhetoric like this is more the rantings of the ideologically possessed than it is an objective, nuanced examination of factual data and the telling of history.
It seems that Hedges doesn't realize that the modern-era United States and Russia have not been the only countries/cultures/societies in the world to embark on wars of conquest in order to acquire land, and resources, and/or protect their spheres of influence.
For better or worse - mankind has been a warring creature since prehistoric times. Even before we evolved to become homo sapiens. Humans from all backgrounds, races, groups, tribes, and cultures have embarked on the wanton killing of their fellow man - for various reasons over time. Violence and tribal warfare are coded within our genetic makeup, and have been that way since time immemorial...
One only needs to study a chimpanzee troop to see how deeply the proclivity for horrific violence runs in our evolutionary biology.
Finally, although warfare is (of course) horrific, and the stories here are very hard to read, the good news is that (despite what the average person may perceive) rates of violent death have been steadily and consistently trending downwards for at least the last 200 years, including the 20th century, that saw two world wars with millions dead. Steven Pinker wrote a few books about this: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and Enlightenment Now.
So, yes warfare is terrible, and the millions of dead are an unimaginable tragedy - but fortunately the rates of death from it have been, and continue to trend downwards. Statistically speaking - there has never been a time or place more peaceful than life in the modern-day world.
******************
The Greatest Evil Is War was a mixed bag for me... While I'll agree with a lot of the premise of the book; that warfare is horrific, inhumane, and nightmarish, I will stop short of the broad-based indictment of Western values and American patriotism that Hedges launches here. This is not to say that the modern military-industrial complex is above criticism. It definitely is deserving of criticism, and a healthy critique of modern warfare and the possible motivations for any war are absolutely essential in striving for global peace. And we should do our best to carefully critique these motivations.
Sadly, this book doesn't really provide that. It is absent of both nuance and context. It is more of an ideological partisan piece; from a mind trying to deal with horrific PTS. It is ultimately not really much more than a fairly low-resolution, ground's eye view of warfare, that fails to bring a much-needed top-down perspective of global power struggles and realpolitik to bear.
I would not recommend it.
2 stars.
June 4, 2023
“I live in a country that is so wealthy we can wage wars and not have to think about them.” so says one traumatised Iraqi veteran.
Hedges is on storming form here calling BS on the US and its ludicrous propaganda and double standards, summing it up at one point, saying, “The rank hypocrisy is stunning.” The direct nature of his approach is both refreshing and effective, leaving no ambiguity on his stance or his target and the many crimes they remain guilty of and who ultimately pays the real price for their vast crimes.
“Our own generals and politicians, who nearly two decades ago launched the greatest strategic blunder in American history and wasted $7 trillion on quagmires in the Middle East, are no less egotistical and incompetent than Putin.”
He strips ideas of war bare, depriving them of the sanitised and often glamorised façade touted and bought by so many Americans, revealing the harrowing truths of the beaten, broken veterans all but lost and forgotten in neglectful VA wards or languishing with housebound afflictions caused by war.
“The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. (Poland, for example, in a recent arms deal, will spend $6 billion on MI Abrams tanks and other US military equipment.) If Russia would not acquiesce to again become the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy.”
Ultimately Hedges gets to the root of the main problem, the vast American military complex, and the permanent war economy which enjoys sustained bipartisan support, as this industry funds both parties. It’s this permanent state of war which has defined the US since WWII. He also shows the problems which emerge when the US shifted from a culture of production to one of consumption.
He challenges those Americans who carried out war crimes in Iraq, who now accuse Russia of the same crimes in Ukraine. Hedges asks us to imagine if the rest of the world imposed the type of crippling sanctions that the Yanks have on Russia after Ukraine. Picture the like of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of America being cut off from the global financial system. Or Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates having their vast assets frozen, or what about the US international media news outlets taken off air, or if their airlines were blocked from flying over foreign soil?...What if top athletes and conductors etc were prevented from performing unless they denounced the US’s illegal invasion of Iraq?...
During the US Bombing campaign known as “Shock and Awe” the American military “saw the dropping of 3,000 bombs on civilian areas that killed more than 7,000 non-combatants in the first two months of the war.”
“The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists, and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neo-cons to liberal interventions. Pseudo-intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview.”
Hedges is on storming form here calling BS on the US and its ludicrous propaganda and double standards, summing it up at one point, saying, “The rank hypocrisy is stunning.” The direct nature of his approach is both refreshing and effective, leaving no ambiguity on his stance or his target and the many crimes they remain guilty of and who ultimately pays the real price for their vast crimes.
“Our own generals and politicians, who nearly two decades ago launched the greatest strategic blunder in American history and wasted $7 trillion on quagmires in the Middle East, are no less egotistical and incompetent than Putin.”
He strips ideas of war bare, depriving them of the sanitised and often glamorised façade touted and bought by so many Americans, revealing the harrowing truths of the beaten, broken veterans all but lost and forgotten in neglectful VA wards or languishing with housebound afflictions caused by war.
“The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. (Poland, for example, in a recent arms deal, will spend $6 billion on MI Abrams tanks and other US military equipment.) If Russia would not acquiesce to again become the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy.”
Ultimately Hedges gets to the root of the main problem, the vast American military complex, and the permanent war economy which enjoys sustained bipartisan support, as this industry funds both parties. It’s this permanent state of war which has defined the US since WWII. He also shows the problems which emerge when the US shifted from a culture of production to one of consumption.
He challenges those Americans who carried out war crimes in Iraq, who now accuse Russia of the same crimes in Ukraine. Hedges asks us to imagine if the rest of the world imposed the type of crippling sanctions that the Yanks have on Russia after Ukraine. Picture the like of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of America being cut off from the global financial system. Or Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates having their vast assets frozen, or what about the US international media news outlets taken off air, or if their airlines were blocked from flying over foreign soil?...What if top athletes and conductors etc were prevented from performing unless they denounced the US’s illegal invasion of Iraq?...
During the US Bombing campaign known as “Shock and Awe” the American military “saw the dropping of 3,000 bombs on civilian areas that killed more than 7,000 non-combatants in the first two months of the war.”
“The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists, and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neo-cons to liberal interventions. Pseudo-intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview.”
September 19, 2023
4.5 stars rounded up.
"'If they're pretty, I'd rape them all, especially back then when we were the law,' one of the killers remembers. 'Fuck em, fuck the shit out of everyone I meet, especially if you get one who's only 14 years old,' he adds, after he and some other death squad veterans pantomimed molesting a girl and holding a knife to her throat. 'Delicious. I'd say, 'It's going to be hell for you, but heaven on earth for me.''" Literally wish I could unread this (not really, because it's good to know about atrocities committed in the world, but holy fuck).
"The United States is almost religious about its patriotism...Military personnel are seen as infallible. You have someone like former Secretary of Defense James Mattis who is a bona fide war criminal. He dropped bombs on a wedding ceremony in Iraq. He's responsible for overseeing many different massacres in Iraq. Or former General and former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster. These people can't do any wrong because they've served. The reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule in the form of fascism or proto-fascism. That's why I felt even more compelled to get out. The public doesn't understand how regressive and toxic military culture really is...The military's inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people. It is designed to be a vehicle of destruction, it's fundamental to the system. Without that, it would collapse. You can't convert the military into a humanitarian force even when you use the military in humanitarian ways, such as in New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina. The military trains soldiers to see other human beings, particularly brown and black human beings, as an imminent threat. Of course, the military prides itself on being apolitical, which is oxymoronic...The military is the political muscle of the state. There are few things more dangerous than a soldier who thinks he or she doesn’t have a political function."
"'If they're pretty, I'd rape them all, especially back then when we were the law,' one of the killers remembers. 'Fuck em, fuck the shit out of everyone I meet, especially if you get one who's only 14 years old,' he adds, after he and some other death squad veterans pantomimed molesting a girl and holding a knife to her throat. 'Delicious. I'd say, 'It's going to be hell for you, but heaven on earth for me.''" Literally wish I could unread this (not really, because it's good to know about atrocities committed in the world, but holy fuck).
"The United States is almost religious about its patriotism...Military personnel are seen as infallible. You have someone like former Secretary of Defense James Mattis who is a bona fide war criminal. He dropped bombs on a wedding ceremony in Iraq. He's responsible for overseeing many different massacres in Iraq. Or former General and former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster. These people can't do any wrong because they've served. The reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule in the form of fascism or proto-fascism. That's why I felt even more compelled to get out. The public doesn't understand how regressive and toxic military culture really is...The military's inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people. It is designed to be a vehicle of destruction, it's fundamental to the system. Without that, it would collapse. You can't convert the military into a humanitarian force even when you use the military in humanitarian ways, such as in New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina. The military trains soldiers to see other human beings, particularly brown and black human beings, as an imminent threat. Of course, the military prides itself on being apolitical, which is oxymoronic...The military is the political muscle of the state. There are few things more dangerous than a soldier who thinks he or she doesn’t have a political function."
July 30, 2023
A two star rating is a compromise I made as I vacillated between three stars and the one star I felt like giving it as I read the first chapters... This MF'er will mention the Ukraine War throughout the book, still hot at the time of this review, but can't help but drone on through all the reasons it's the West's, specifically the USA's, fault. Ok, so through most of 2022 we've gotten to see the Russian kleptocracy's incompetent forces rape, torture, & steal their way back & forth across Ukrainian territory, and I'm sorry but I'm just not willing to get up there on the cross with him. Googling the author's name you find out he'd previously had a show on the RT news network... stands for "Russia Today" and yeah, suddenly it makes a bit more sense. He does like to end his little rants with "but of course Russia invaded and that's a crime, that's on them even if we basically made them do it". Clownish.
I read a little ways in and then put it down angrily for a few days, picking it back up and finding suddenly approximately 70 pages in that I was starting to relate more strongly to those later chapters. The book is titled "the greatest evil is war" so obviously when I picked it up I was sympathetic to the assumed "war = bad" thesis.
I read a little ways in and then put it down angrily for a few days, picking it back up and finding suddenly approximately 70 pages in that I was starting to relate more strongly to those later chapters. The book is titled "the greatest evil is war" so obviously when I picked it up I was sympathetic to the assumed "war = bad" thesis.
October 26, 2022
A passionate collection of essays, biography, and meditation on the idiocy of war. I have not witnessed Hedges’ events in quite the same, but trips to Vietnam, The Gulf War, and back into Iraq in 2004 persuade me his assessments, insights, and comclusions are on target. His prophetic writings have left me more sad and less hopeful. I was a military chaplain in my last two wars. Sadly, I could not do enough to counter the aggressive attitude, or the fears, so many had. I tried….
August 31, 2023
Grace, who recommended this to me, was right: every person should read this book. I want every American and Canadian to read it, especially the young ones, the late high school and college ones. It changed the way I see the world and I think it alone could change the world.
August 30, 2024
If I could have, I would have finished this in one sitting. This was a fascinating read and makes me want to dive head first into learning more about the industrial war complex. It'll be to the detriment of my mental health 🫠.
January 8, 2024
One star for the Author's interjections, consistently confused rambling and the instrumentalisation of others for his diffuse messages irrespective of the context he tears them from. (Like citing Freudian Theory as if it were fact for one)
Five stars for the personal accounts and experiences that were shared within the book.
Quoting Page 138: 'All words and images, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity'.
The only obscenity is the way the suffering and pain is instrumentalised to push a message other than war is terrible. Apart from citing Noam Chomsky, Freud and basically anyone under the sun that has said something Mr. Hedges might find interesting, he also uses the personal accounts and emotionally laden jargon throughout this book. What was odd to me is that he didn't cite Smedley Butler, who called out most of his correct talking points with 'War is a Racket' in 1935, but I guess that him not being broken by war acted as a deterrent to the overall narrative.
You can do great damage to a good cause with bad arguments, this book is a resplendent example.
The Military Industrial Complex is a horrendous machine, it and corporate welfare are great evils upon mankind.
The commodification of man and his experience in capitalism presents a terrible reduction in outlook for the individual, most are well fed, but ontologically impoverished.
However, that doesn't justify communism and socialism as a solution. That only ends up in ontologically impoverished and starved people.
TL DR: Read it if you want to know what potentially awaits you if you sign up for the military or intend to go to war as a journalist or a medic.
Five stars for the personal accounts and experiences that were shared within the book.
Quoting Page 138: 'All words and images, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity'.
The only obscenity is the way the suffering and pain is instrumentalised to push a message other than war is terrible. Apart from citing Noam Chomsky, Freud and basically anyone under the sun that has said something Mr. Hedges might find interesting, he also uses the personal accounts and emotionally laden jargon throughout this book. What was odd to me is that he didn't cite Smedley Butler, who called out most of his correct talking points with 'War is a Racket' in 1935, but I guess that him not being broken by war acted as a deterrent to the overall narrative.
You can do great damage to a good cause with bad arguments, this book is a resplendent example.
The Military Industrial Complex is a horrendous machine, it and corporate welfare are great evils upon mankind.
The commodification of man and his experience in capitalism presents a terrible reduction in outlook for the individual, most are well fed, but ontologically impoverished.
However, that doesn't justify communism and socialism as a solution. That only ends up in ontologically impoverished and starved people.
TL DR: Read it if you want to know what potentially awaits you if you sign up for the military or intend to go to war as a journalist or a medic.
August 24, 2023
I read fiction that was gut wrenching. This is not fiction but I needed time to recover after certain passages.
Chris Hedges has the capability of describing realities is such haunting images that you cannot escape. All that he says is true but he is preaching to believers. Some guy with doubtful education and five assault weapons under his pillow will not be converted to pacifism by this discourse.
For a superficial eye he will seem a Putin propagandist. He might be right that the war in Ukraine is maintained by American weapons but deploring someone like Yanukovych is a bit too much. It seemed like Russians can impose their puppet just because Americans imposed theirs all over the world. Ukrainiens are nowhere to be found. They are the grass that suffer when elephants fight.
This aspect apart, this is the kind of book that should be in every school library. Voices like his are absolutely necessary if we are to survive as humanity.
Chris Hedges has the capability of describing realities is such haunting images that you cannot escape. All that he says is true but he is preaching to believers. Some guy with doubtful education and five assault weapons under his pillow will not be converted to pacifism by this discourse.
For a superficial eye he will seem a Putin propagandist. He might be right that the war in Ukraine is maintained by American weapons but deploring someone like Yanukovych is a bit too much. It seemed like Russians can impose their puppet just because Americans imposed theirs all over the world. Ukrainiens are nowhere to be found. They are the grass that suffer when elephants fight.
This aspect apart, this is the kind of book that should be in every school library. Voices like his are absolutely necessary if we are to survive as humanity.
October 14, 2022
Chris Hedges is an outspoken critic of human societies and cultures. In this volume, he dissects the seemingly unending phenomenon of war. No war is left unscathed (including the current Ukraine was which is thinks could have been avoided, if only the politicians at and after the time of the Soviet breakup would have honored their promises).
From the corporate beneficiaries of continual war to the permanent scars on both soldiers and society, his criticism is relentless. War Memorials are tragic monuments to stupidity if not moral bankruptcy! In America, both Democrats and Republicans trip over themselves getting to their checkbook to buy new and better weapons to deploy in new and more vicious conflicts.
It is human folly but it is a folly that remains on the periphery of national concerns. Chris, like me, holds a degree in divinity. He has absorbed the Christian virtue of hope while I have lapsed into a philosophical nihilism. Through his extensive writing, he fights on in an authentic Christian manner. In another of his works, when he realizes the sysiphuliptic nature of his pleading, he advises that we retreat into "monastic" communes, with others that share our values. I actually tried that, only to find that our values were not actually shared, and even if they were, communal living has many other challenges!
Anyway, this is a challenging analysis of the 'death instinct' that leads the world to possible annihilation...it is not pleasant, but it is important.
From the corporate beneficiaries of continual war to the permanent scars on both soldiers and society, his criticism is relentless. War Memorials are tragic monuments to stupidity if not moral bankruptcy! In America, both Democrats and Republicans trip over themselves getting to their checkbook to buy new and better weapons to deploy in new and more vicious conflicts.
It is human folly but it is a folly that remains on the periphery of national concerns. Chris, like me, holds a degree in divinity. He has absorbed the Christian virtue of hope while I have lapsed into a philosophical nihilism. Through his extensive writing, he fights on in an authentic Christian manner. In another of his works, when he realizes the sysiphuliptic nature of his pleading, he advises that we retreat into "monastic" communes, with others that share our values. I actually tried that, only to find that our values were not actually shared, and even if they were, communal living has many other challenges!
Anyway, this is a challenging analysis of the 'death instinct' that leads the world to possible annihilation...it is not pleasant, but it is important.
September 24, 2022
In 2014 I was introduced to Chris Hedges through his book "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning." This latest book could be considered a companion volume. The two books are quite different. The first is almost (but not quite) a memoir, while this volume deals with the evils of war. There are parts of this book that are focused on the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the geopolitical contest that prompted it. This is the weakest part of the book. It assumes that NATO expansion is all about the great powers' contest and presumes that the nations that chose to join NATO were forced. The fact is that nations join NATO because it offers a degree of security not available to nations that go it alone.
Ultimately, Hedges is correct. War is always evil, even when it is justified. The soldiers who participate in wars are forever changed, with the shame and guilt poisoning the remainder of their lives.
Unfortunately, the Kindle edition of this book is spoilt by an assortment of typographical errors of the type that would have been easily caught by an automated spell checker.
Ultimately, Hedges is correct. War is always evil, even when it is justified. The soldiers who participate in wars are forever changed, with the shame and guilt poisoning the remainder of their lives.
Unfortunately, the Kindle edition of this book is spoilt by an assortment of typographical errors of the type that would have been easily caught by an automated spell checker.
October 4, 2022
The Truth, the Whole Truth - about War
Chris Hedges is the truth- teller - because he was there - in the wars - reporting, interviewing those who survived though maimed in spirit and/or body - and he writes with both passion and poetry of what he has witnessed - leavening it with all kinds of evidence confirming his summation. This a book at once terrible and necessary - which were it possible should be compulsory reading for all the twisted psychopathic individuals in charge of warmongering - government, media and military.
Chris Hedges is the truth- teller - because he was there - in the wars - reporting, interviewing those who survived though maimed in spirit and/or body - and he writes with both passion and poetry of what he has witnessed - leavening it with all kinds of evidence confirming his summation. This a book at once terrible and necessary - which were it possible should be compulsory reading for all the twisted psychopathic individuals in charge of warmongering - government, media and military.
October 11, 2022
Hedges’ latest book acts as a great counterweight to the pro war propaganda the media feeds us. A must read for those who care to know the true human costs of war.
January 21, 2023
Read this and get throughly disgusted with the United States government and defense industry that runs it.
February 20, 2024
An incredibly powerful book, and often an uncomfortable one. This is the kind of book that I can actually feel teaching me things and making me think about things in a new way, and I always greatly appreciate that. It's also a timely read, as I've recently begun a career in war journalism myself. Everything in this book is worth keeping in mind for any journalist, and also I think probably everyone on the planet would benefit from reading it.
This book touches on a lot of things I've considered before, and expands on nearly all of them. It has also taught me a lot, or at the very least reinforced ideas or made me realise things from a new angle. It goes without saying that war is terrible (or I guess not, as the book highlights) and it's a known fact that you can never understand war until you've seen it yourself. I thought I understood this before, but it seems that there's always more to learn. If you can't learn it first-hand, this book will make a good ambassador for the point. It's blunt, it's uncomfortable reading, it shamelessly points fingers yet manages to avoid being holier-than-thou. It's honest and completely infuriating in the way that it focuses on so much that is wrong about the world, but it's also fearless and beautifully defiant. It spits in the face of the war myth. This is something we need to do now more than ever; I have long grown sick and tired of such things, and books like this one articulate why. If I hadn't already reached the point of no return, this book would have convinced me; as it happened, I reached that point a few months ago in Ukraine, walking along endless rows of fresh graves, some so new that the dirt was still piled a foot high over the grave and the headstone hadn't been set. Hundreds and hundreds of new graves, on ground that had been untouched two years ago; so many names, so many photographs of men and women a decade younger than me (and me, only in my early thirties). A cup of frozen coffee left underneath a picture of somebody's dead son. I felt the evil pointlessness of it all then, and this book has only made me all the more committed to that undeniable truth.
It's a difficult view to hold in today's ultra-militaristic society, where people keep note of your support and try to use it to make all kinds of assumptions about you. And war itself is far from a black-and-white issue; calling it good or evil is still a generalisation. But it's important to be aware of why wars happen, and what they do to people when they occur. You can support a war all you like; you can sing its praises from the heavens. If you look at all this grief and terror and pain and injustice and inhumanity and maimed people and dead children and politicians growing fat on it all, and you still say you agree with war, fair enough. I'll never agree with you but at least you're informed. But if you won't do this, if you try to sanitise war behind trite slogans and a vague sense of patriotism or "doing the right thing," what right do you have to support something you won't even face? All I ask is that you confront what it is first. That's why I do what I do, and that's why books like this should exist, and that's why everyone should be reading this book and really, really thinking about it. It's the least we can do.
This book touches on a lot of things I've considered before, and expands on nearly all of them. It has also taught me a lot, or at the very least reinforced ideas or made me realise things from a new angle. It goes without saying that war is terrible (or I guess not, as the book highlights) and it's a known fact that you can never understand war until you've seen it yourself. I thought I understood this before, but it seems that there's always more to learn. If you can't learn it first-hand, this book will make a good ambassador for the point. It's blunt, it's uncomfortable reading, it shamelessly points fingers yet manages to avoid being holier-than-thou. It's honest and completely infuriating in the way that it focuses on so much that is wrong about the world, but it's also fearless and beautifully defiant. It spits in the face of the war myth. This is something we need to do now more than ever; I have long grown sick and tired of such things, and books like this one articulate why. If I hadn't already reached the point of no return, this book would have convinced me; as it happened, I reached that point a few months ago in Ukraine, walking along endless rows of fresh graves, some so new that the dirt was still piled a foot high over the grave and the headstone hadn't been set. Hundreds and hundreds of new graves, on ground that had been untouched two years ago; so many names, so many photographs of men and women a decade younger than me (and me, only in my early thirties). A cup of frozen coffee left underneath a picture of somebody's dead son. I felt the evil pointlessness of it all then, and this book has only made me all the more committed to that undeniable truth.
It's a difficult view to hold in today's ultra-militaristic society, where people keep note of your support and try to use it to make all kinds of assumptions about you. And war itself is far from a black-and-white issue; calling it good or evil is still a generalisation. But it's important to be aware of why wars happen, and what they do to people when they occur. You can support a war all you like; you can sing its praises from the heavens. If you look at all this grief and terror and pain and injustice and inhumanity and maimed people and dead children and politicians growing fat on it all, and you still say you agree with war, fair enough. I'll never agree with you but at least you're informed. But if you won't do this, if you try to sanitise war behind trite slogans and a vague sense of patriotism or "doing the right thing," what right do you have to support something you won't even face? All I ask is that you confront what it is first. That's why I do what I do, and that's why books like this should exist, and that's why everyone should be reading this book and really, really thinking about it. It's the least we can do.
December 26, 2023
You would think that after finishing a history of Roe v. Wade on Christmas Day, I would not be seeking out more reading material at all — and despite its shorter length, I doubt anyone would call this anti-war treatise by Chris Hedges "light reading." I had previously read his book "American Fascists," and very much enjoyed his journalistically-informed activist perspective. In this context, and as a person who has been almost exclusively anti-war for my entire life, I decided to give this book a try.
Though short, Hedges is able to effectively deliver a simultaneously fact-based and philosophical critique of the military-industrial complex and its hold on American society. Analyzing the concept of "just victims" and even connecting our reverence for the military to our national love of sport, he depicts a media that he was once a part of that lionizes negative actions. It is especially disturbing to reflect on graphic descriptions of war crimes, but that is the goal of this book: to force readers with no military experience to grapple with the realities of war. Hedges does this quite effectively, as an esteemed former war zone reporter.
For me personally, this book comes at a strange time. Although the war in Gaza certainly reminds me of its themes, the war in Ukraine has made me less opposed to global conflict that I had previously been. In this sense, the author's opposition to the concept of just war can be uncomfortable, especially in seeming to blame the West for Russia's incursion. In the first few pages, Hedges writes, "Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry." The author, who formerly hosted a show on RT America, is certainly critical of Putin's actions and yet simultaneously believes that Russia wants to bring about an end to a conflict they started. Though I think his arguments are philosophically perhaps sound, this general anti-Americanism in focus and tone frustrated me.
This is essentially a populist critique of modern imperialism and adjacent capitalism, but more than that it is a philosophical reflection of the anti-war ideal. I take issue with the author's focus nearly exclusively on the sins of the United States, which can sometimes even dip into conspiracy theories by consistently linking all sectors of societal "elite" to our grim battles. But there is certainly truth even to these passages, and Hedges uses a broader critique of nationalism to make a book written nearly exclusively for American audiences into one relevant worldwide. I would recommend this book to the activist, to those who are already on the page of the anti-war cause, and are looking for more arguments and more theory to deepen their beliefs.
Though short, Hedges is able to effectively deliver a simultaneously fact-based and philosophical critique of the military-industrial complex and its hold on American society. Analyzing the concept of "just victims" and even connecting our reverence for the military to our national love of sport, he depicts a media that he was once a part of that lionizes negative actions. It is especially disturbing to reflect on graphic descriptions of war crimes, but that is the goal of this book: to force readers with no military experience to grapple with the realities of war. Hedges does this quite effectively, as an esteemed former war zone reporter.
For me personally, this book comes at a strange time. Although the war in Gaza certainly reminds me of its themes, the war in Ukraine has made me less opposed to global conflict that I had previously been. In this sense, the author's opposition to the concept of just war can be uncomfortable, especially in seeming to blame the West for Russia's incursion. In the first few pages, Hedges writes, "Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry." The author, who formerly hosted a show on RT America, is certainly critical of Putin's actions and yet simultaneously believes that Russia wants to bring about an end to a conflict they started. Though I think his arguments are philosophically perhaps sound, this general anti-Americanism in focus and tone frustrated me.
This is essentially a populist critique of modern imperialism and adjacent capitalism, but more than that it is a philosophical reflection of the anti-war ideal. I take issue with the author's focus nearly exclusively on the sins of the United States, which can sometimes even dip into conspiracy theories by consistently linking all sectors of societal "elite" to our grim battles. But there is certainly truth even to these passages, and Hedges uses a broader critique of nationalism to make a book written nearly exclusively for American audiences into one relevant worldwide. I would recommend this book to the activist, to those who are already on the page of the anti-war cause, and are looking for more arguments and more theory to deepen their beliefs.
October 15, 2024
As the child of a soldier killed in Vietnam, I have always known the horror of war. Not in its daily body-consuming conflagrations, but in the losses that make no one’s life better.
My eyes have always been open to the grift that is the industrial war machine, so nothing here was to revelatory, but it was compelling, nonetheless.
If you believe there are good wars and bad people who deserve the wrath of others, I challenge you to read his book and maintain that perspective.
Gratitude to the journalists who put themselves in harms way so that we might know the truth. Tragically, we do not take what they tell us to heart, because if we did, we wouldn’t justify endless war.
My eyes have always been open to the grift that is the industrial war machine, so nothing here was to revelatory, but it was compelling, nonetheless.
If you believe there are good wars and bad people who deserve the wrath of others, I challenge you to read his book and maintain that perspective.
Gratitude to the journalists who put themselves in harms way so that we might know the truth. Tragically, we do not take what they tell us to heart, because if we did, we wouldn’t justify endless war.
September 9, 2025
Holy shit this book was amazing. I already held anti war beliefs prior to reading this but after finishing it, it only enhanced my hate for war. To learn about the stories of American soldiers who fought in the middle east being fucked over by the government after leaving the service is seriously sickening. Not to forget the rape and countless other war crimes Americans commited in afghanistan and iran, and other countries during the pointless war in the middle east, makes my hatred for this country and the young people poisoned by the military grow. Great book
January 21, 2024
A totally fascinating read for everybody. You have to make up your own mind as to the authors political views as I did. However his first hand knowledge and understanding of the total futility of human warfare, its causes, reasons and consequences are indisputable. Troubling, at times disturbing and challenging. There has to be, must be a better way.
October 11, 2025
Hedges viscerally imparts the horrors and atrocities of war with devastating imagery. While deeply affecting and, at times, hard to read, it is this brutal honesty that makes the book such a valuable polemic on war and those who wage it.
March 19, 2025
What a shitty world we live in. A reminder that it's shittier than you imagined.
March 16, 2024
The title is no more hyperbole than the rhetoric heard on every street corner in America, the patriotism displayed in audacious and ubiquitous ways in favor of the war. Which war? Does it matter? Read this book and see the ways in which America has swindled Americans to justify the sacrifices of their children, literally, and our collective conscientiousness, figuratively.
March 29, 2024
This isn’t a book I’d loan a friend to read but it was really good. Final two chapters really pull the whole thing together. War is hell man
September 8, 2024
war
we as individuals do not matter
war destroys our individuality
castrates our humanity
if truth is the first casualty in war then ambiguity is second
we as individuals do not matter
war destroys our individuality
castrates our humanity
if truth is the first casualty in war then ambiguity is second
September 5, 2025
An important discussion of how segments of society promote war. This book emphasizes the responsibility for each of us to remain educated and critical minded about the world around us.
December 2, 2023
"War is the raison d’etre of technological society. It unleashes demons, and those who profit from these demons, then and now, work hard to keep them hidden."
"The merchants of death are satanic. The more corpses they produce, the more their bank accounts swell."
Chris Hedges
"The merchants of death are satanic. The more corpses they produce, the more their bank accounts swell."
Chris Hedges
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