War is a Meaning Forced Upon Us

Easy read, some good insights, too quick of an end: too pat. Love is all you need doesn't work after the prurient voyeurism of violence that makes up most of the book. It did make me go find my copy "War Music" and "All Day Permanent Red" by Chistopher Logue, so that was a good thing. The Illiad is still one of the best war books going. I loaned out my copy of Hedges so I am going to just give a few general comments. Hedges spends a large amount of time cataloging the horrors of the wars he has encountered, doing little to justify his conclusion, other than God I hope Love is the answer because hate sure is nasty. I liked the differentiation of Mythic and Sensory view of war and war reporting. His idea of Mythic reminds me of the "magic' idea of glamour: a dazzling that makes others believe what is really not there. I guess it is that desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself that attracts us to the "myth" of war, because no one really wants the reality of war in their part of the neighborhood. Blood is messy.

The End and the Beginning

by Wislawa Szymborska


After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.


Reading the introduction of "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" made me think of this poem.

The Berlin Wall Fall Anniversary

Wow. We read Niebuhr, discuss his anachronisms re. communism on Sunday, then hear today of the 20 year anniversary of the Berlin Wall Fall today. Poignancy.