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WAR: A special report, hosted by John Hockenberry
Week of May 5, 2004

Everybody says they're against war, but as a species, we just don't seem to be able to shake the habit. Is there something innate in humans that draws us back to war time and again, despite the awful cost to individuals and society? This special presentation, hosted by John Hockenberry, presents an insightful and powerful vision of war and how to prevent it, as we go behind the headlines to explore the social and psychological underpinnings of war. Guests include: "just war" expert Michael Walzer; Col. Anthony Hartle, who teaches ethics to cadets at West Point; Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc; The New York Times war correspondent and best-selling author Chris Hedges; and William Vendley and William Tolbert of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Tolbert, a minister whose father was assassinated during his tenure as president of Liberia, joins us via cell phone from Monrovia where he is working as a peacemaker. The program also includes a special report on paintball warfare, a performance and discussion with anarchist rockers Chumbawamba who offer a starkly different "peace song," a soldier who describes the thrill of battlefield conflict ("a part of me would certainly love to have that feeling again"); and civilians who have survived war.

John Hockenberry (whose commentaries are heard weekly on The Infinite Mind) takes over the microphone this week from regular host Dr. Fred Goodwin for a special one-hour exploration of humanity's love/hate relationship with war. In his opening remarks, Hockenberry recalls his many assignments as a war correspondent. From child soldiers toting guns to grizzled veterans displaying medals, there is ample evidence of humankind's morbid fascination with warfare, Hockenberry observes. With a war memorial or several in every town, he wonders, what will archeologists of the distant future conclude about the place war holds in our culture?

The program begins with Naw Mu-si, who fled the repressive military government of Burma, also called Myanmar, with her family. Soldiers burned her family home when she was six, and she spent much of her childhood living in a dangerous refugee camp.

Hockenberry's first guest is Chris Hedges, a reporter and former war correspondent for The New York Times. Hedges' recent book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, was based on his own experiences in nations at war, and quickly became a best-seller. Hedges has an unusual background for a war reporter -- he holds a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School. Nevertheless, he says, he was quickly seduced by the allure of war: "War is the most powerful narcotic invented by humankind, and it is a drug that I partook of for many years." Hedges and Hockenberry discuss the relationship between war and sex, the dehumanizing effects of war, and Hedges' own years in dangerous places like Bosnia and the Middle East.

To contact Chris Hedges, please write to: Chris Hedges, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036.

To order War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, click here. To order his most recent book What Every Person Should Know About War, click here.

For another perspective, we go next to Bezan Morris, second in command of a Marine artillery battalion in the recent conflict with Iraq. Morris, whose brothers are also in the military, describes the sights and sounds of war and the powerful feeling of controlling 76 artillery tubes firing simultaneously at a real enemy target. There's nothing like it, he says, but scoring a ninth-inning home run or a last-second touchdown comes close.

Hockenberry's next guest is Dr. Steven LeBlanc, an archeologist and director of collections at Harvard University's Peabody Museum and author of Constant Battles: The Myth of the Noble Savage and a Peaceful Past. LeBlanc says his work indicates that war has been with human beings throughout history and prehistory. Even cultures that appear peaceful at first have ultimately show evidence of war making. He cites the ancient Mayans as a case in point. Nearly everybody, he says, assumed the Mayans were "a peaceful people led by peaceful priests. Then they learned to read Mayan." Mayan writing, he says, is filled with references to war. In all instances, he says, evidence indicates that conflict is tied to scarce resources. Even disputes that appear to be about other issues -- religion, ethnic differences, territory -- are traceable to fear of short supplies, or, among later generations, the memory of that fear. The positive long-range outlook, he says, is that such fears appear to fade with four or five generations of plenty. If the world can figure out a way to use technology to feed all its people, he says, it may be possible to eradicate war in the future.

To contact Dr. LeBlanc please write to Dr. Steven LeBlanc, Harvard University, The Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. Or visit www.peabody.harvard.edu.

To order Constant Battles: The Myth of the Noble Savage and a Peaceful Past, click here.

Next up, The Infinite Mind's Deryl Davis reports on the growing popularity of paintball, a sport in which people hunt and shoot each other, marking a "kill" with paint pellets. While paintball enthusiasts defend the game as a useful way to build teamwork and blow off steam, a sociologist wonders whether a game based on predation and the joy of the kill can truly bring people closer together.

Are some wars more just than others? And is there a practical benefit to moral behavior on the battlefield? Hockenberry is joined next by Dr. Michael Walzer, America's leading just war theorist and author of the landmark 1977 book Just and Unjust Wars, and by Col. Anthony Hartle, an expert in military ethics, who teaches the ethics of war to cadets at West Point. Walzer defines"just war" with a domestic analogy: If you are attacked on the street and you defend yourself, he says, that, in miniature, is a just war. Or, if you hear cries of help from children in a neighboring house and you run in to protect them from a drunken father, that is the domestic analogue of a humanitarian intervention. In recent history, he says, one can find examples of just wars in World War II, in the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and in NATO's intervention in the Balkans. The intervention that didn't happen to stop the murder of 200,000 ethnic Rwandans would have been a just war, Walzer says. Hartle, who says that he uses Walzer's book in the classroom with his officer candidates, talks about a letter he received from an Army officer during Operation Desert Storm. A senior officer ordered the young man to mount a machine gun on an ambulance. While the young officer followed the order, he later wrote to inquire whether it was ethical to arm a medical vehicle. Six weeks later, long after that conflict had subsided, senior officers in Washington ruled that it was not. Hartle oberves that it was encouraging that the officer had remembered his class in ethics two years after leaving West Point. Hockenberry, Hartle and Walzer go on to discuss the ethical issues at play in high-tech warfare (is risk-free intervention a moral proposition?) and the potential for a war-free world. Neither Hartle or Walzer thinks world peace is likely any time soon.

To contact Dr. Walzer, please write to: Dr. Michael Walzer, Princeton University, School of Social Science, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540. Or visit www.princeton.edu.

To contact Col. Hartle, please write to Col. Anthony Hartle, The United States Military Academy of West Point, Department of English, Building 07, West Point, NY 10996. Or visit www.usma.edu.

To order Just and Unjust Wars, click here.

We hear next from the anarchist rockers who make up Chumbawamba. They perform their song "Jacob's Ladder," rewritten earlier this year in reaction to the impending war in Iraq. After the performance, musicians Alice Nutter and Boff Whalley speak with The Infinite Mind's Bill Lichtenstein, explaining the origins of the song and their views on the world peace movement. "Jacob's Ladder," Nutter says, refers to the ladder to heaven and was used in this context to symbolize the futility of wasting lives in senseless wars.

For more information about Chumbawamba, or to order CDs, please visit: www.chumba.com.

Next up, we hear from George Kun, who sought political asylum in the U.S. after leaving Liberia. His father was active in the Doh government and was shot by the military in front of his family. Kun recalls hardship and danger in Liberia during its prolonged civil war.

The Infinite Mind's Macky Alston reports next on the peace-making efforts of World Conference of Religions for Peace, which is working against war in troubled nations. We hear from the secretary-general of the organization, Dr. William Vendley, and from the Rev. William Tolbert, who directs its programs in East Africa. They describe Religions for Peace's efforts to smoothe tensions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and we hear a bit of a reconciliation workshop that encourages communication between the victims of war and perpetrators of those conflicts. Tolbert says his personal commitment to peace is grounded in his own experience in Liberia as a child and the loss of his father, former president of Liberia, to political assassins. Vendley concludes by describing the process by which all sides in a conflict develop a common language, a new language that has a firm grounding in each of the community's religious traditions. To bridge the gap between religions, he says, peacemakers must learn to speak both languages.

To contact Dr. Vendley or the Rev. Tolbert, please write to: The World Conference of Religions for Peace, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017. Or visit www.wcrp.org.

-- June Peoples

This special The Infinite Mind presentation on War was produced with the major underwriting support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Nonprofit Finance Fund and Auburn Media, a division of the Center for Multifaith Education at Auburn Seminary.

 

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