Throughout most of Chris Hedges’ new book, The Greatest Evil is War, there’s not much to ponder. Hedges has not written a philosophical treatise or a heady analysis of battlefield strategy. Nor does he propose a novel way of assessing war, such as Samuel Moyn did in last year’s Humane, which argued that making war more humane only prolongs it. Hedges refuses to reside in the abstract, creating instead a book about war that is meant to be experienced viscerally.
Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author who has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Central America, wants us to feel what he has felt and see what he has seen in those combat zones—and he has seen more than enough throughout his career. His book is nothing short of a gut punch.
According to advance publicity, Hedges was reluctant to write another book about war, but relented after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Appropriately then, he kicks off his powerful jeremiad by drawing a parallel between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and the United States’ invasion of Iraq. He does this for two reasons. Most obviously, he’s emphasizing the hypocrisy of the American political-media establishment that was so quick to condemn Putin—the “new Hitler”—for invading a sovereign nation after that same media establishment enthusiastically supported the U.S. war against Sadaam Hussein. Both were and are wars of aggression, after all.
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“Preemptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime,” Hedges declares in the book’s very first sentence. “Drag Putin off to the International Criminal Court and put him on trial. But make sure George Bush is in the cell next to him.”
Comparisons like this won’t sit well with many. But Hedges draws parallels between these wars and others that have historically been framed as “good versus evil” because he wants to erase such distinctions. “There are no good wars,” he insists. While acknowledging that we must occasionally fight, such as in World War II, he reminds us that the suffering of those involved—physical, spiritual, moral—is almost never justified.
The examples Hedges offers of such suffering can be hard to stomach. But they are key to his argument that U.S. media must attempt to portray the reality of war instead of offering up the romantic “myth” of wartime heroism that we’re typically shown. This myth, Hedges says, must be obliterated so Americans can make informed decisions about whether to support these wars.
In a chapter titled “Shadows of War”—excerpted in its entirety in The Progressive’s October/November issue—Hedges presents the book’s central thesis. He writes: “War’s effects are what the state and the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep hidden. If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war.”
Simply put, Hedges argues that destroying this “myth” would mean fewer wars. And to do this, his book aims to present the reality of war in chapters that examine PTSD and moral injury; what it’s like to kill another human being; war profiteering; military brainwashing; killing children; grieving families; the story of a paraplegic veteran; and an interview with a Holocaust survivor. Saving Private Ryan this is not. The book is an utter repudiation of war as a noble or glorious endeavor.
Hedges refuses to reside in the abstract, creating instead a book about war that is meant to be experienced viscerally.
The most disturbing chapter is simply titled “Corpses,” and it tells the story of Jessica Goodell, a Marine sent to Iraq to “process” dead soldiers—many of whom died by suicide, and many with bodies so mangled by IEDs that little remained except “vaporized flesh” that she had to scoop into body bags. Her story will haunt you for days.
I wrote earlier that The Greatest Evil is War is meant to be experienced viscerally and not intellectually. That’s true until the end. In “Permanent War,” the book’s final and most important chapter, Hedges puts American war-making into a broader context and explains why our wars have become interminable. His analysis here is the same one expounded by many of the great war critics of our time, such as Noam Chomsky, Andrew Bacevich, Glenn Greenwald, and the late Michael Hastings.
Following World War II, America saw the birth of a massive national security state—the “military-industrial complex,” as Eisenhower called it—ostensibly justified by the threat of the Soviet Union. To fund this new state, crucial resources were diverted from infrastructure, education, healthcare, and clean energy research and development. Meanwhile, Hedges writes, America transitioned from being a country that primarily produced things to a country that primarily consumed things.
Hedges observes how these two factors—a gargantuan military and a new American ethos that promised endless consumption without responsibility—have landed us in the predicament we’re in. As Andrew Bacevich told me in a 2010 interview, this is “the heart of the dilemma.” America must now constantly build weapons and fight wars to secure the resources necessary to maintain its limitless consumption.
But permanent war and endless consumption are unsustainable, of course. Not only are they destroying our planet (the Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of petroleum in the world), but, as Hedges points out, they are destroying our liberal traditions and democratic institutions. “Permanent war,” he argues, “cheapens culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media and wrecks the economy.” There is little question we are seeing this borne out.
In a brief but chilling coda, Hedges says witnessing so much war has nearly broken him, and admits that no one can truly convey what it’s like to be in combat. “It’s impossible to portray war,” he concludes.
Maybe so. But The Greatest Evil is War is the rawest, angriest, most graphic, and most revolting account of war I’ve ever read. And it comes about as close to shattering the “myth of war” as any portrayal—or attempted portrayal—that I’m aware of.
Editor’s Note: You can read an excerpt from The Greatest Evil is War in the October/November 2022 issue of The Progressive.