The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2003, Page 14, Image 14

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Killing creates a wide circle of internal suffering added
to its physical devastation. Individual people and whole nations
enter into what might be considered clinical depression, given
the severity and longevity of the symptoms. Associated Press
reporter Brian Murphy gives the account of an Iraqi deserter
attempting to answer questions of his escape, and breaking
down: “It was a deep, sudden sobbing he couldn't control. His
shoulders heaved. Tears wet the frayed sleeve of his green Iraqi
army sweater." His country’s people, he said, “just want an end
to all this," and added that they “are afraid for the future." “That's
when he started to cry," the article concludes, and “Moments
later came the thud of a U.S. bomb hitting the ridge just across
the river." (YahoolNews, 3/31/03).
Hedges, a master of divinity from Harvard University,
ends his account in a way which might be expected from this
educational background, but which takes on weight given his
years on the battlefields:
“To survive as a human being is possible only through
love. (p. 184). . . Love may not always triumph, but it keeps us
human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion
of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. And there are times when
remaining human is the only victory possible." (p. 168).
Which mirrors what he has written toward the start of his
book:
“The only antidote to ward off self-destruction and the
indiscriminate use of force is humility, and, ultimately, compas­
sion. Reinhold Niebuhr aptly reminded us that we must all act
and then ask for forgiveness. This book is not a call for inaction.
It is a call for repentance." (p. 17).
That call for repentance is among the subjects to be
found in the next book as well. In his latest book, Reverence,
Paul Woodruff, professor of Humanities at the University of
Texas in Austin, examines our loss of humility, honesty and
openness, restraint, timely emotion — our sense and commit­
ment to what the ancient Greeks termed “reverence."
II. Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue
“Oh you know I could be right...
oh yes, you know I could be right...
then again I could be wrong...’’
-MISSISSIPPI BLUES LYRIC
FROM PAGE 13
I. ‘War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning’
“We have to remember our own surges of anger,
how we sometimes choose a country or a people
and load our hatred on them, how we go to war —
and then how later we come to our senses and
perceive that ills are not to be so simply projected
on an alien group."
-WILLIAM STAFFORD
(from 'Crossing Unmarked Snow')
The American poet, teacher and literary critic, Randall
Jarrell, prepared B-29 combat crews in learning celestial naviga­
tion before they were sent on their bombing missions in World
War II. He wrote one of the most anthologized poems about one
of the war’s most atrocious attributes — that of its changing
complex human beings into simple, disposable things. In case
you haven't run across it for a while, here is the poem:
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare Fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose
(from ‘Randall Jarrell The Complete Poems', 11th printing 2001)
This is what Chris Hedges' book, War Is A Force That
Gives Us Meaning, tells us in prose. He is a ten year veteran
of reporting wars in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central
America. After observing massacres and of being in the middle
of battles and guerrilla engagements where he was nearly killed
himself, he discovered that war is a strong pull — that is, essen­
tially addictive He reminds us that our country’s current way of
war (technological, distant and abstract) is violent in the extreme
and that it is based on lies, those of the government to media,
the media to citizens, and finally of generals to troops. Based on
lies, war starts a series of moral and social unravelings, starting
with the brutal discovery of the addictive nature of violent acts.
Hedges writes about it this way:
“And like every recovering addict there is a part of
me that remains nostalgic for war's simplicity and high, even
as I cope with the scars it has left behind, mourn the deaths of
those I worked with, and struggle with the bestiality I would have
been better off not witnessing The chance to exist for an intense
and overpowering moment, even if it meant certain oblivion,
seemed worth it in the midst of war — and very stupid once the
war ended" (p.5).
Why does Hedges say in the title of this book that
war’s force gives us “meaning?" War has meaning for the State,
he says, because it “needs" war to assert power so that it can
get whatever it is it wants at any given moment in history The
State asserts a “moral certitude" in wartime that “is a kind of
fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion,
one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color
the modem world of Christianity, Judaism and Islam " (p. 147).
For individuals, Hedges says, war's meaning resides in several
things — comradeship (a variety of false love and friendship),
the imposition of common goals one doesn’t have to formulate
for oneself, escape from personal problems and responsibilities
back home, a call to idealism (even for a cause one may not
understand or isn’t always imparted with honesty). But some­
times, perhaps even often, for individual soldiers war's meaning
resides in the power and adrenaline thrill it offers. “However
much soldiers regret killing once it is finished...the act itself...is
often thrilling. . .The eyes of the soldiers are crazed. They speak
only in guttural shouts. They are high on the power to spare lives
or to take them." (p.147).
Hedges' admitted addiction to war, until he became
aware of it and managed to rid himself of it, causes him to speak
formidably about its attraction: “It takes little in wartime to turn
ordinary men into killers Most give themselves willingly to the
seduction of unlimited power to destroy and all feel the heavy
weight of peer pressure. Few, once in battle, can find the
strength to resist." (p.87).
If one has escaped addiction to war, though, being
involved in or even witnessing violence takes a bone-deep
toll on the emotions. Such as that described by a pilot who was
ask?d after one of the first strikes in the war on Iraq if he felt
an adrenaline rush. “I don’t think it’s an adrenaline rush," the
28 year old from Tennessee answered, “I think it’s just scared."
(YahoolNews, 3/29/03). The fear is for one’s own life, of course,
but Hedges expands on this more obvious motive to include the
less obvious: the powerful reactions (and fear must be among
them, as well as grief) that happen when one is not only the
target, but also the killer: “To be sure, soldiers who kill innocents
pay a tremendous personal emotional and spiritual price. But
within the universe of total war, equipped with weapons that can
kill hundreds or thousands of people in seconds, soldiers only
have time to reflect later. By then these soldiers often have
been discarded, left as broken men in a civilian society that
does not understand them and does not want to understand
them."”(p.86).
THE END OF THE WAR
All violent like the knife that drove
the pity-begging life out through the eyes,
and wilted the choked voice in little cries
that bubbled and blinked out along the floor
All hungry like the outlaw stare that tore
the North and reeled the rivers in along the spool
that never would unwind them any more
to wander cool
but stretched them taut to all that's far away.
All lost by dusty roads, all fled with love,
all hid along with play:
all hurt by what we lost who conquered in the war —
so violent, so lost, so far away
-WILLIAM STAFFORD (1945)
“Why write about reverence?" Paul Woodruff asks early
in his book, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue.
“Because we have forgotten what it means...because
without reverence things fall apart. People do not know how to
respect each other and themselves.” (p. 13).
In this book, the ancient Greek concept of reverence
is viewed from many points of reference: what happens in daily
lives when it is not honored, how the ancient Greeks put it in a
central position in their lives even knowing that it could not be
perfectly lived, what it meant to the ancient Chinese, expressed
in Confucian ethics in the Analects, how it is essential to leaders
and teachers and what happens when it is ignored, and the
peace and order it engenders and supports as exemplified in
the home.
What is reverence? The attributes central to the virtue
of reverence are, “the well-developed capacity to have the
feelings of awe, respect and shame when these are the right
feelings to have." (p.8). Here is a book which pleads, then, for
the restoration of our numbed feelings, but not in self-serving,
unleashed ways. Instead, to find the proper time and use for the
feelings inherent in reverence. To recover and use the emotions
of awe, respect and shame that will bring us to the fuller, higher
places of our humanity.
We are all aware of the urgency of Woodruff’s message.
We are loaded down with the litany, now familiar to every one of
us, of the lies, covertness, narrow interests and paucity of awe in
our current Administration, Congress and Court system (though
there are some within each of these who we know are fighting
against the current). The desire for quick and often violent action
is held in check only briefly and only with intense and prolonged
pressure from citizen protests and international disapproval.This
apparently “good" leadership quality of decisiveness is rightly
questioned as to motive. John Berger, writing for The Nation
(5/12/03), characterized the Administration's decisiveness as
“their invariable device for preventing the asking of questions."
If there are moments of awe, respect and shame in
those who now hold power and who govern us, they are hidden
as an eclipsed sun. Our country’s surge to own everything and
to wipe out opposition, at home and around the world, is nothing
short of irreverence. As a nation which can get into heated
debates over phrases in our “Pledge of Allegiance,” one of the
first loyalty oaths demanded of our children in the classroom
and which contains the promise of “justice for all," we may need
Woodruff to remind us that "Anyone who is reverent toward
justice will want to stand against beliefs that call for violence
or oppression." (p.150).
It is the terrible realization of being lied to by those in
power which cuts a citizenry, and its arm of force — its military
— off at the knees. A chapter titled “The Reverent Leader" is
worth many readings. We know, but need constant reminders,
that the greater a leader's power, the more essential it is for that
leader “to develop inner restraints against the abuse of power."
(p. 178). Respect for followers “usually requires two things: the
leader does not deceive the followers, and the leader is open
to persuasion in return...Openness and honesty are defenses
a good leader employs against the danger of bad judgment."
(p.176).
The predicament of a military that is led by an ethically
impoverished national leader is especially tragic. From top brass
to foot soldier, the military arm of a government is trained to be
loyal to the hierarchies and disciplined in action. If all this is to
enforce goals based on minor interests and lies, the “supreme
sacrifice" asked of soldiers, and often given, is then terrible,
unjustifiable and irreverent.
The emphasis on ceremony in the training of soldiers
(drills, marching, uniforms) is meant to keep violence for
personal reasons in check, and to build teamwork and respect
for orders. The discipline of it is supposed to be carried out even
into the toughest battlefield engagements.
"The ceremony with which we surround ourselves in war
is part of what makes warriors warriors and not bandits. It’s part
of what expresses the attitude that is essential to any orderly
military force: that the violence they use is not in their own
service, but in the service of something larger than themselves
— even in the end, larger than nations." (p.179).
When we ask a portion of our population to use force for
our sakes — to kill other people for us — we ask it of them with
the added responsibility which reverence requires. That killing
force must be used in the service of something larger than even
the nation in whose name it is trained and deployed. If the
leaders of that nation are dishonest, unrestrained, and refuse