The Allure of War by Wally Myers
Reflections on War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

“The prospect of war is exciting.  Many young men, schooled in the notion that war is the ultimate definition of manhood, that only in war will they be tested and proven, that they can discover their worth as human beings in battle, willingly join the great enterprise.” 

The Force of War
          We have all felt the excitement of competition, the exhilaration of victory.  For those, who are engaged in hand-to-hand combat, these feelings are energized so strongly that all of their hopes, all of their allegiances, all of their righteousness, all of their support are focused on their side winning.  They can’t think about the other side’s humanity, they don’t feel compassion for the other’s injuries, they don’t question the morality of their actions, they don’t reflect on who is innocent and who is the enemy.  Combat is the time for action, for destroying and killing the enemy on the one hand, and on the other, for protecting and saving their compatriots.  It is not the time for moral quandaries.   
The kinetic force of combat, being fed by the positive potential of victory and the negative potential of defeat, cannot be controlled within the warrior.  The intense force of war is controlling the warrior. To control it within would require a diverting force from within, but in combat all the force is committed.  There’s nothing left to control it.  War is in control by the commitment and submission of the warrior.  The force of war is directed toward killing and destruction and reduces the mind of the warrior to the fight-or-flight instinct.  Gone is the ability to discern moral choices.  Gone is the ability to foresee long-term consequences.  And gone is the ability to restrain destructive actions.  The force of war is just too strong for subtle considerations.  The force of war overcomes morality.  If you’ve ever felt overcome by rage or fear, you know that.

The War of Forces
          There is nothing war-like about forces except when we direct the forces against each other.  As in physics, we expend effort that is wasted on the friction of resistance, the heat of hostility, and the noise of frightening chaos.   But the stronger force overcomes the weaker only when they are in direct opposition.  A smaller force applied at the right occasion, in the right place, and in the right direction can redirect the stronger force and overcome it.  With so much history that shows us that strategy is more important than force, it is foolish to build weapons whose force of destruction would bring suicide.  Ever since we dropped atomic bombs on two cities, we have become the victims of our weapons.  We delude ourselves into thinking that high-tech weapons are more precise, that innocent civilians can be spared; but in truth the collateral damage, the friendly fire, just gets worse.  In our worship of power we have created weapons that could destroy our planet many times over.  Our weapons have become frightening and we are held hostage by them.  To prevent others from getting that destructive power we will go to war.  Their very power has become a justification for war.  The destructive force of our weapons is making paranoia, reasonable; and self destruction, inevitable. 

The Meaning of War
          Hedges wrote that, “War finds its meaning in death”.  Death is a powerful motivator that changes our actions and perceptions.  The world takes on a different meaning.  Every soldier killed on our side is a justification for retaliation.  Every soldier killed on their side is a justification for celebration.  War justifies two moralities, a compassionate one for our side and a hateful one against theirs.  These opposite moralities are at war within the mind.  This is the war mentality, a mind at war with itself.  Compassion and hate, can’t live together; but war can’t live without them.  The world becomes divided, separating evil from good.  The mind becomes divided, separating the morality of hate from the morality of compassion.  The meaning of war is that it justifies with death the morality of hate, which then justifies the morality of killing. 

The War of Meanings
          Each side of war has its own history, its own justifications, and its own pride portraying opposition to the other side.  Everything that was shared is blamed against the other for ruining.  Cooperation is seen with suspicion, as traitorous.  The other side is deluded by deceivers and provocateurs.  Our side is true by the righteous and the wise.   The strategies of battle are the strategies in word-war.  Attack those who oppose the war by silencing them no matter how. Each side has its own meaning that denies legitimacy to the other.  With two meanings at war with each other, war destroys the bridge between meanings.

The Meaning of the Force of War
          Might makes meaning.  If we have the power, then we can compel people to do our bidding, to make things as we want them to be, to change the meaning of situations by changing the situations.  By making history, we create meaning.  By making war, we make meaning.  But it is the making of meanings in conflict. And the force of war is powered by the hate within the mind, the hate that distorts truth, the hate that gives purpose to killing, the hate that is the potential energy that feeds war.  And one-sided-justice is hate’s justification, the mis-meaning of multi-sided-truth. For although might can make meaning, only truth makes right.

The Force of the Meaning of War
          Kill or be killed. There is no more urgent and powerful force within the mind. It is the instinct to live, to survive; and we all have it.  It is the force of life, and we all share it. It is the hub of morality, and we all live by it.  When we cut out someone, some group by denying their right to live; we become less, we hold back, we dismantle our morality.  Such a division has its own force, its own dialectic.  We verses they, polarized power, from a dualistic mind where fighting for good is good.  And fighting against evil is good too.  Where fighting against evil is fighting for good is doubly good.  The power of fighting is doubled, one for good and one against evil.  It become clear, what to do.  Unhindered by compassionate restraint, justified by hateful righteousness, the force is focused, decisive, and powerful.  The potential of hate becomes the kinetic energy of anger, of destruction, of killing, of war.  War turns the force of living into the force of killing.  But don’t hate war; have compassion for those addicted to its allure.

 “A soldier who is able to see the humanity of the enemy makes a troubled and ineffective killer.”

Quotes from Chris Hedges’

War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

War celebrates only power-and we come to believe in wartime that it is the only real form of power.  It preys on our most primal and savage impulses.  It allows us to do what peacetime society forbids or restrains us from doing.  It allows us to kill.  However much soldiers regret killing once it is finished, however much they spend their lives trying to cope with the experience, the act itself, fueled by fear, excitement, the pull of the crowd, and the god-like exhilaration of destroying, is often thrilling.  P. 171

We believe in the nobility and self-sacrifice demanded by war, especially when we are blinded by the narcotic of war.  We discover in the communal struggle, the shared sense of meaning and purpose, a cause.  War fills our spiritual void.  I do not miss war, but I miss what it brought.  I can never say I was happy in the midst of the fighting in El Salvador, or Bosnia, or Kosovo, but I had a sense of purpose, of calling.  And this is a quality war shares with love, for we are, in love, also able to choose fealty and self-sacrifice over security. P. 158

We are tempted to reduce life to a simple search for happiness.  Happiness, however, withers if there is no meaning.  The other temptation is to disavow the search for happiness in order to be faithful to that which provides meaning. But to live only for meaning-indifferent to all happiness-makes us fanatic, self-righteous, and cold.  It leaves us cut off from our own humanity and the humanity of others, we must hope for grace, for our lives to be sustained by moments of meaning and happiness, both equally worthy of human communion.  P. 159

Atrocity canceled out atrocity.
The cause … justifies the means.  We dismantle our moral universe to serve the cause of war.  And once it is dismantled it is nearly impossible to put it back together.  It is very hard for most of us to see the justice of the other side, to admit that we too bear guilt.  When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us pick contentment.
When a cause is exhausted, or no longer needed, it can only be invalided in direct proportion to the invalidation of the opposing cause, this is a scourge of war.  We can deflate our own cause but must deflate the cause of the other as well.  P. 150-1

“It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars.  … Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this.  Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself.” Elias Canetti
The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives.  P. 145

The prospect of war is exciting.  Many young men, schooled in the notion that war is the ultimate definition of manhood, that only in war will they be tested and proven, that they can discover their worth as human beings in battle, willingly join the great enterprise.  The admiration of the crowd, the high-blown rhetoric, the chance to achieve the glory of the previous generation, the ideal of nobility beckon us forward.  And people, ironically, enjoy righteous indignation and an object upon which to unleash their anger.  War usually starts with collective euphoria.  P. 84

War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us.  It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought.  All bow before the supreme effort.  We are one.  Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but also meaning.  And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.
The tension between those who know combat, and thus the public lie, and those who propagate the myth, usually ends with the mythmakers working to silence the witnesses of war.  P. 10-11

For once a group or a nation establishes that it alone suffers, then all other competing claims to injustice are canceled out.  P. 67

For the lie in war is almost always the lie of omission. P. 22