ABCs Nightline on Friday Night: Reading the Names of US Military Killed in Iraq

What will be the effect of this public memorializing? Will it bring a sense of the loss involved in this war? Will it cause Americans to finally ask why we are in Iraq and if forceful intervention is really a democratic way of bringing freedom to people?

Of course, it is late friday night, on a news show, but last week pictures of fallen soldiers' coffins and now this on network TV? Could this be a pivotal moment in public opinion?

(thanks to Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse for posting a notice about the Nightline special)

Report on the Show

The Memory Hole

Picture the Costs of War

The Costs to Our Children and Our Civil Rights

As I first saw the image for the link above "Darkness" by Rage Against the Machine was playing on the radio...

Also check this out:

Chris Hedges is a long-time war correspondent who wrote a very important book called War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003). It is a passionate call for us to reconsider the roots of the human addiction to war through a careful consideration of the realities of warfare and our necrophiliac relationship with the symbols, rituals and displays of military culture.

Chris Hedges later gave a commencement speech at Rockford college that was disrupted and caused a nationwide controversy. Hedges showed great courage in sticking to his beliefs and not backing down. He is no simple-minded pundit attempting to manipulate the masses for profit and power, but a considerate, thoughtful, former divinity student, shocked by the violence he has seen in the world, but hopeful that we may still change.

Chris Hedges' controversial May graduation speech at Rockford college:

Speech

AlterNet now has an interview with Hedges online: The Silencing of Dissent on Graduation Day.

Interview

Democracy Now interview:

Interview

Excerpts from “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”:

Excerpt

More writings by Chris Hedges:

Hedges' Writings

1 Hour audio lecture on “The Mythology of War”:

Audio Lecture

TomPaine.com interview:

Interview

Chris Hedges and “Enforced Conformity”:

Enforced Conformity

Interview a month before the speech on “Dangerous Citizen”:

Dangerous Citizen

PBS interview about “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”, includes streaming video of the interview:

PBS Interview


Further sources:

Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion of War (1998)
Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973)
Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1992)
Carolyn Marvin's and David Ingle's Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (1999)
Alexander Laban Hinton's edited collection Annhilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (2002)