Cultures of War -- How Militarism and Groupthink Lead to Catastrophe

Cultures of War is one of those books that, according to reviewers on amazon.com, people will either love or hate. Out of fourteen reviews, seven give it a five-star rating, six give it a one star, and one give it a three. Right off the bat, I'll tell you what my rating is: it is a very strong 5. Generally speaking, if you're a person who regards criticism of the U.S. and its policies as treason, you will hate this book. (One amazon.com reviewer calls it "a hate-filled rant from an ultra left loon.") But if you're looking for one of the best analyses around on how militarism with its culture of war dumb-down analysis and result in "strategic imbecilities", as John Dower so eloquently puts it, then you will love this book. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, and author of Japan in War & Peace, historian John W. Dower challenges conventional thinking about Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9/11/2001 and our war in Iraq. It was conventional thinking that got Japan in trouble prior to and during World War II, and it was conventional thinking that got the U.S. in trouble following the terrorist attack on 9/11/01 with its global War on Terror and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For example, in the run up to World War II, racism played a significant factor in dismissing the clear indication that Japan's leaders "were clearly poised for war" (page 15). The same was true with the fatwa declaring holy war against "the Judeo-Christian alliance" issued by Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants nearly eight years before the events of 9/11/01. Rather than take them seriously, U.S. officials and military commanders dismissed both threats as unimportant, because they came from people who were non-white (Japanese and Islamists). If you don't believe this, take a look at racist U.S. World War II propaganda and the fact that "[n[o one at the top levels of the Bush administration ... had the imagination to take these warnings seriously." "In domestic policy projections, terrorism was not even included among the 'top-ten' priorities established for the Justice Department by Attorney General John Ashcroft. '9-ll' surpassed the Pearl Harbor debacle in exposing negligence and inability to think outside the box at the highest levels" of our government) page 16).


Does John Dower have a point of view? Oh, definitely ... and here it is. Prejudice and group-think prevent clear thinking and analysis. Reality is defined in categorical terms (nonwhite foreigners are irrational; whites, because of our Enlightenment ideals of reason, order, civilized behavior and our Christian history, are rational). Thinking outside the box (Asians are bright, intelligent people, as are Arabs and other non-whites) is discouraged and sometimes not permitted at all. The result? Well, we've been through that often enough that we shouldn't need to revisit it ... but it is clear from recent history that we must.


John Dower is very hard on the administration of George W. Bush, and for very good reason. His administration relied on beliefs rather than sound analyses (Donald Rumsfeld's remark than we'd be in and out of Iraq in a matter of 6 weeks or so after toppling Saddam Hussein is one example; having no plans at all for an occupation is another) and, when legal questions were raised about things the administration was doing, Bush's lawyers jiggered the law so that what was illegal could now be defined to fit within the "Rule of law" (see Chapter 14:"Convergence of a Sort: Law, Justice, and Transgression"). What happened after Iraq was defeated was just plain disaster for everyone concerned, especially the Iraqi people. The main problems? No real planning. Whereas in post-defeat Japan plans for an occupation had been worked out in detail long before the war's end, in Iraq's case, no planning had taken place at all. The occupation was run by "market fundamentalism" -- that sacred cow of George W. Bush and his people -- with unbelievable levels of corruption on all sides that ended in a huge mess. Dower devotes a whole chapter (15: "Nation Building and market fundamentalism") to this subject.


The lack of preparation and outright lying about the two wars George W. Bush got us into are nearly beyond belief. John Dower does a wonderful job of drawing all this together in a very readable way, contrasting it with what went right in our occupation of Japan ... and how we have worked that occupation to serve our global needs, often at the expense of the Japanese people, something that I have witnessed first hand now that I live in Japan.



Put Cultures of War with James Carroll's House of War, Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Robert Scheer's The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America,  and Richard H. Immerman's Empire For Liberty, and you'll have a comprehensive history of what has happened to the U.S. over the past sixty years


John Dower's book is not a light read. Drawing on a lifetime of study and masses of information (there are 100 pages of reference notes), it demands concentration, patience and a willingness to have your thinking challenged. You may quarrel with it and even hate it. My recommendation is that you read it with an open mind. You will learn things about your country that you may not wish to hear, but are valuable nonetheless. If you think the book is "worthless", I challenge you to think again.


Rating:  ****

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts

First published in 2001, Archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman's fine book will challenge people with an orthodox view of the Bible because, as the archaeological record shows, many of the events recorded in it,did not take place quite as the narrative says.

As Finkelstein and Silberman – both archaeologists – show, the archaeological record tells a very different story from the traditionally accepted one. Their story is more believable and, as it turns out, more accurate than the orthodox view of the Bible is historically pretty accurate, and events like Joshua’s battle against Jericho, the Exodus, and the great kingdoms of David and Solomon were true. Archaeology shows that they could not be, because there is no record of them where and when there should be.

“The power of the biblical saga,” they write “eloquently expresses the deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences, and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive” (page 318). The biblical saga is woven together from myth, folktale, origin and hero stories, songs and poetry from different times creating a story that met the political needs of specific times. “The authors and editors of the Deuteronomistic History and parts of the Pentateuch gathered and reworked the most precious traditions of the people of Israel to gird the nation for the great national struggle that lay ahead” (page 283). What was needed was “a great national epic of liberation for all the tribes of Israel, against a great and domineering pharaoh, whose realm was uncannily similar to its geographical details to that of” pharaoh Pammetichus, who reigned during the 7^th century BCE.

The archaeological record shows conclusively that the great events of Hebrew history (the Exodus, the origins of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Yaakov, the great kingdoms of David and Solomon) did not happen as written, and that there was no place in geography called “Eden” where God once wandered in the forest. Biblical history “was not history writing in the modern sense. It was a composition simultaneously ideological and theological” (page 284). In other words, the Deuteronomistic History and the Bible itself are compilations woven together over time to tell the religious and cultural story of a people, much in the way that the Popul Vuh (Book of the People) – a collection of mythistorical narratives of the Post Classic Quiché kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands – were collected.

This is not a point of view that will go down well with fundamentalists who insist on making science conform to their literalistic reading of the Bible as accurate history. But it makes the Bible – these ancient stories – more acceptable to people like me because it makes the narrative more real and “true” as myths are “true”. And in ancient times, myth and factual events were more often interwoven than not. George Washington, for instance, didn’t have to actually chopped down a cherry tree for me to understand the “truth” of the story – that George Washington could be trusted because, when asked about the tree, he told the truth.

Reading the Bible this way, it is easy to place various parts of the narrative within their historic context (such as specific dress and dietary rules) rather than having to see them as truths-for-all-time-and-all-people, as the literalists see them. I found the book both fascinating and a joy to read. It was published by Touchstone in 2002.