Chris Hedges' critically acclaimed work War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning was published in June of 2003, just over a month after Bush declared the war over on the bow of the USS Abraham. With the recent beheading of Paul Johnson and the ongoing investigation into US tortures over detainees on our collective conscience, my thoughts turned to some fitting quotes from Hedges.
[page 20] We are quick to accept the facile and mendacious ideological veneer that is wrapped like a mantle around the shoulders of those who prosecute the war.
It helps to have a conservative core of media stations that will paint the ideological veneer that the White House wants them to. And in response to the media in times of war, Hedges' writes this fascinating description:
[page 22] ...the lie of war is almost always the lie of omission. The blunders and senseless slaughter by our generals, the execution of prisoners and innocents, and the horror of wounds are rarely disclosed, at least during a mythic war, to the public. Only when the myth is punctuated, as it eventually was in Vietnam, does the press begin to report in a sensory rather than a mythic manner. But even then it is it reacting to a public that has changed its perception of war. The press usually does not lead.
Prior to Reagan's death, I do believe that we saw this very thing occurring, the 9/11 investigations, the investigations into torture, and the pressing on the White House in regards to the Torture Memo. Reagan's death, in many aspects, has taken many back into that mythic mindset, including the media.
What is Hedges' definition of mythic and sensory reality? Consider these paragraphs:
[page 21] Lawrence LeShan in The Psychology of War differentiates between "mythic reality" and "sensory reality" in wartime. In sensory reality we see events for what they are. Most of those who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war. They would not survive if they did. Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is--organized murder.
But in mythic war we imbue events with meanings they do not have. We see defeats as signposts on the road to ultimate victory. We demonize the enemy so that our opponent is no longer human. We view ourseleves, our people, as the embodiment of absolute goodness.
In the bolded text in the first paragraph, I sense that this is why there is such a push by the Admininstration to stress the ties between Al Qaida and Saddam's Iraq; this is why this Administration is trying to instill in our heads that Abu Ghraib was simply the acts of "a few bad apples;" this is why there is always an image painted that the war is going as planned. The mythic reality of our war with Iraq is on the verge of sloughing away, as it should do.
The second paragraph, the second line is simply masterful because we see this being fed to us frequently. Whenever there has been a major setback or tragedy, such as Fallujah, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, or Ashcroft has come out in a speech or press conference and said that this uprising or battle indicates that we are wiining the war on terrorism.
Finally, I'd to leave off with a section about abuse and torture. Hedges' prefaces this paragraph with the portion of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, in which Achilles meets Hector on the battlefield. Achilles finds Hector unarmed and rather than be honorable enough to allow Hector to arm himself and battle for his life, Achilles opts to literally slaughter him with the help of his soldiers. Hedges comments on this passage with these poignant thoughts:
[page 30] Moments after Hector's death dozens of heavily armed men thrust spears into Hector's corpse. Achilles commands his Myrmidons to cry out to the Greeks that he "hath the mighty Hector slain." Here is the lie of the heroic ideal, an ideal we nurture, despite centuries of war. Here is the instant creation of heroic myth, out of murder. Here also we see the mutilation of the dead that has been part of military behavior since there were men in arms. If you kill your enemy his body becomes your trophy, your possession, and this has been a fundamental part of warfare since before the Philistines beheaded Saul.
These facts haunt the pictures, video, and stories coming out of Abu Ghraib. Our drive to possess trophies made out of human suffering, torture, and murder may yet destroy our perception of our war; it may yet bring down this presidency.
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