The greatest evil is war

Chris Hedges

Book - 2022

"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 brilli...ant, 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"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Seven Stories Press [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Chris Hedges (author)
Physical Description
205 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781644212936
  • I. The Greatest Evil Is War
  • II. Chronicle of a War Foretold
  • III. Worthy and Unworthy Victims
  • IV. The Pimps of War
  • V. The Act of Killing
  • VI. The Soldiers Tale
  • VII. Existential Crisis
  • VIII. Corpses
  • IX. When the Bodies Come Home
  • X. Wounds That Never Heal
  • XI. Shadows of War
  • XII. War as Myth
  • XIII. War Memorials
  • XIV. The Golden Age of Heroes
  • XV. Orphans
  • XVI. Permanent War
  • Coda
  • Acknowledgments
  • Bibliography
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Hedges (Our Class) delivers a blistering condemnation of war in all forms and for all reasons. Opening the book with a forceful condemnation of the U.S. government's role in provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine by breaking its promise not to expand NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, Hedges draws on his experiences as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere to paint a visceral portrait of the horrors of combat and its physical and psychological aftereffects. Throughout, he fiercely condemns the "war industry" for prolonging conflicts and U.S. politicians and journalists for using "bellicose rhetoric" to demonize enemies and elevate allies into "demigods." Some of the book's most powerful pieces draw on the firsthand testimonies of soldiers and their loved ones, including a former U.S. Army Ranger who speaks eloquently of how indoctrination into military culture made him "want to deliver death," and the father of a Marine killed by a sniper in Iraq. Elsewhere, Hedges lets personal grievances distract from his larger points, as when he complains that the Kremlin-funded news channel RT America, where he had a show, was shut down in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Though not all its provocations land, this spiky treatise deserves to be reckoned with. (Aug.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A plangent diatribe against war. In his latest, Hedges argues that "preemptive war is a war crime," including in the Ukraine, but the West made Russia do it by extending NATO into Eastern Europe, so that "Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry." And because Russian was the primary language of most Crimeans, why should Russia not have annexed the peninsula? The author's condition-tinged discussion--which simultaneously damns and excuses the war in Ukraine--soon grows tiresome, especially because Hedges does not extend the same "yes, but" privilege to, say, Germany in its invasion of German-speaking Sudetenland or the U.S. in its invasion of Iraq. While excoriating the Biden administration for being stocked with presumed nationalists such as Anthony Blinken and Kimberly Kagan (the latter's crime being, apparently, that she founded a think tank that studies war), Hedges writes, "When an enemy can't be found, an enemy is manufactured. Putin has become…the new Hitler, out to grab Ukraine and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe." Is Putin an invented foe? That seems a dividing-line question: If you answer in the affirmative, you'll likely keep reading, and if not, not. A noted leftist critic, Hedges was a contributor to the now-shuttered Russian TV channel RT America, which may explain the rationalizations, against which his concluding prayer that we see "an end to war before we stumble into a nuclear holocaust that devours us all" seems halfhearted--particularly when it's preceded by a call for a moratorium on arms shipments to Ukraine. Elsewhere, Hedges rehearses the usual charges, few surprising: War is bad because civilians get hurt, soldiers are scarred ("The worst trauma is often caused not by what combat veterans witnessed but by what they did"), corporations become rich, and so on. A book of predictable hectoring--a far cry from the author's best work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.