"The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with
our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents
of alienation and dislocation," writes Chris Hedges, a foreign correspondent
for the New York Times. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges draws
on his experiences covering conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel as
well as works of literature from the Iliad to Hannah Arendt's The Origins of
Totalitarianism to look at what makes war so intoxicating for soldiers,
politicians and ordinary citizens. He discusses outbreaks of nationalism,
the wartime silencing of intellectuals and artists, the ways in which even
a supposedly skeptical press glorifies the battlefield and other universal
features of war, arguing not for pacifism but for responsibility and humility
on the part of those who wage war.

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