A Controversial Thesis: War is a force that gives us meaning.

Curious title, isn't it? If war is a force that gives us meaning, how does it give us meaning? The answer lies in the underlying myth that supports it, and has supported it, from the dawn of the human species. This is the Warrior Myth, and it is part of every culture and society. We see it in familiar stories of great warriors, heroes, heroines and gods, all of whom fight great battles to defeat "the enemy". In these tales, it is the warrior that is held up to be emulated by the young, especially young men. In Japan it is the samurai and his code; in America it is the pioneers, the adventurers, the men and women who fight our wars, and the war heroes. Underlying the Warrior Myth are two underlying assumptions that are woven so tightly into it that they reveal the great myth that underlies and defines it. This is the myth that says that our side is goodness incarnate, and their side (the enemy) is evil incarnate and must (and will be) destroyed, since the gods (or God) is on our side (the side of virtue and goodness). If you don't think so, review the history of the past thirty years, or the past sixty years, in which our acts have uniformly been presented as necessary and good, and their acts as unnecessary and evil. Anyone who questions our collective behavior, motives and the Warrior Myth is labeled as foolish ord dangerous -- an enemy, an outsider who is, at best, shunned.

A myth is a traditional story that is accepted as history, a story that explains the origins and the world view of a people. In America's national myth, ugliness, brutality and meanness are denied, or are romanticized, explained away and justified. We declare our motives to be pure, we set our heroes on pedestals, and we parade the veterans of our wars up and down streets on national holidays, all in the service of the great, underlying myth that we are paragons of virtue who do not and never have engaged in questionable or wrong behavior. If you doubt this, look back over the past seven years of the Bush Administration's "war on terror", in which every single act, no matter how questionable legally, has been justified as right and good, and all who have questioned it declared to be irrelevant buffoons or traitorous.

Myth, and more particularly the Warrior Myth may make great drama, but it is lousy history. As Chris Hedges powerfully illustrates, it is destroying us and the planet on which we live. The Warrior Myth devours the soul of our humanity, destroys countless lives (including those who return from combat, and those civilians who have survived it), and has morphed into a huge, powerful automated machine that has proven almost impossible to shut down because our society and our culture has become dependent on it. Myth is self-justifying, self-reifying...and in the case of the Warrior Myth, also self-destroying on a massive, impersonal scale.

"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" is not an easy book to read, because Chris Hedges presents war in all its grisly, ugly and senseless detail. As a veteran war correspondent, he has lived it, and it shows. One of the chapters, and the longest one (Chapter 4: "The Seduction of Battle and the Perversion of War") which shows graphically the lie of "purity" that is embedded in the Warrior Myth, was very difficult for me to read. I recall reading "The Brothers of Gwynedd", three historical novels by British writer Edith Pargeter, and having to stop midway through the second novel because the stupidity and carnage of battle was too overwhelming. Set in medieval Wales at the time of the Plantagents, I read until I literally could not read any more. "Nothing," I told my wife, "has changed in the last five hundred years, nothing except our weapons, which are worse. We must change ourselves before we destroy ourselves, either accidentally or on purpose." But, as Hedges and others show, the march goes on.

What is the solution? "To survive as a human being is possible," Hedges writes, "only through love. And, when Thanatos" (the death instinct) "is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean that we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we musts affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal" (pages 184, 185).

This is an important book for your future and for mine, and for our grandchildren. Unfortunately it is not a book that those in whom the Warrior Myth is most embedded, most especially our leaders and those dependent upon it for their livelihood, are likely to recommend or read. But it is a must read for anyone who wants a better future for those we love.

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn's book is not new, but it is new to me. First published in 1980 and most recently in 2005 as a Harper Perennial Modern Classic, it was recommended to me earlier this year by Ramzy Baroud, journalist, editor of The Palestine Chronicle and author of My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. Given our recent history, it is a book that ought to be on everyone's reading list, and taught in every school in the land. (There is also A Young People's History of the United States published by Seven Stories Press in June 2009, which I haven't read.) It is not, however, a book that power brokers and true believers in the American Myth about a pristine national past in which liberty and justice were from the beginning for all.
 
As Howard Zinn so ably shows, the history we have gone through for the past few years in which economic and political power is controlled by financiers and robber barons is older than the republic and as new as today's headlines. There are, writes journalist Bill Moyers "two Americas: A buoyant Wall Street [and] a doleful Main Street" (speech at Boston University on October 29, 2010, as a part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series). This has always been true in the U.S. From the beginning, liberty and justice were for the wealthy landowners. If you owned nothing you were not only poor, you also could not vote. 

Every bit of liberty and justice average people have in America we have struggled and frequently fought for. It has never been given to us, though that is what we are often led to believe. If anything, what we are told is that we ought to be grateful to our leaders for what we have.

In Chapter 23, he writes these words: "Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes." The reasons are all too obvious: The robber barons of earlier times have resurfaced once again, chipped away at our security and well-being, had their corporations declared "persons" so they can legally buy all the influence, stolen jobs and life savings from millions of hard-working people, and gone back to their gated communities without the slightest flutter of regret. There is no class war, writes novelist James Lee Burke; "The war ... [is] between the have-nots and the have-nots. The people in the house on the hill watch it from afar when they watch it at all" (Swan Peak).


Do yourself and your family a favor: Go out and buy a copy of Howard Zinn's masterpiece. You'll be glad you did. (But don't expect a walk-through-the-park pleasant read, because that's not what it is. It's a bracing wake-up call.

  

Gaza

Would there be a Palestinian problem if Israel treated Palestinians the way it treats Jews? No, because Palestinians would be and would have have been treated as neighbors and as partners in building a homeland for them both. But politics intervened and we have what we've had since 1948 -- a divided land seething with resentment and violence.

This has particularly been the case since the 1967 war when Israel took the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt respectively and occupied it, promising the Palestinian residents their freedom but never giving it to them. As journalist Robert Scheer writes, "There is no such thing as a morally acceptable occupation, and as the oppressed resist they will become more violent in their desperation. In turn the occupiers will show their true colors as oppressors."

The secret to stopping the violence and improving Israel's security needs is, as Scheer so eloquently says, to treat Palestinians the same way as Jews are treated, with dignity and respect.

The other day Israel again tried to crush dissent and protest by attacking it. The attack, in which 9 civilians were killed and 600 arrested ("kidnapped" is perhaps the better word), backfired. New boatloads of nonviolent protesters bearing building materials, medical supplies and food are on their way and more are planned.

If Israel wishes peace and the respect of its neighbors and the world, it must immediately cease its blockade of Gaza, discontinue the illegal settlements in the West Bank that have but one purpose, and that is to occupy the whole of the West Bank and prevent any hope of the Palestinians having their own homeland. If Israel wishes to destroy itself, the best way to do it is to continue what it's doing. If it wishes to live and prosper, the only way to do that is to begin treating everyone with respect as human beings.

The Palestinian people are good people who deserve better. Two excellent resources to increase your understanding are Naomi Shihab Nye: "Habibi", and Ramzy Baroud: "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story".

All for this post,

Toasty

Keeping your word

President Obama has clearly said that he intends to treat America’s allies as equals. I take this to mean that his administration is open to the opinions and suggestions of their allies when the two sides sit down to discuss policy issues. The old “Top dog, Underdog” days are dead and gone. Or so we have been led to believe.

Reality has so far shown that what we are getting is more of the same old thinking and behavior: We are the top dog here, and you are expected to do as we wish without so much as raising an eyebrow. When we tell you to jump, the only thing we’ll accept from you is the question “How high, sir?” If you want to kill trust, this is one of the better ways to do it.

I am becoming more that a little annoyed with America’s petulant grousing about the Hatoyama government's taking President Obama at his word by dealing with American officials as equal partners in discussions on policy issues. If President Obama is serious about meeting with allies as equal partners, he needs to begin acting that way. The words coming recently from Secretary Gates and others within the administration give the clear impression that the Obama administration expects Japan to kow-tow to their wishes without so much as raising a question or offering an opinion. This is a replay of the arrogant “Just who do you think you are talking to!?” attitude that kills trust and plays well with no one. As an American, I find it disgusting and deeply troubling.  

Frankly, I think it is high time allies begin showing America that they expect to be treated with respect as equals,  especially when the “senior partner” says it is their policy to do so.

I am proud of Prime Minister Hatoyama and his Ministers who, ever so politely, have been showing President Obama that they intend to hold him to his word. I applaud them for it. Mister Hatoyama certainly has my support.

All for this post,

Toasty