PLAY LOUD
Two Tribes (Annihilation Mix)
Music by Peter Gill, Holly Johnson and Mark O’Toole
Performed by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Screen capture from the Two Tribes video
Music for War
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Category Archives: War
The Good War
The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy.
Manners from Heaven (1985)
Photo by Jan Saudek: Kisses in the Moonlight (1986)
On Civil Wars
If we have the same tastes and like the same things, surely we are bound to get along. But what will happen when we share the same desires?
Violence and the Sacred (1972)
Photo by Andrew Testa: Bloody footprints in the snow, Kosovo, 1999
Related: Bloodlust: Why we should fear our neighbors more than strangers
Why We (All of Us) Fight
His voice had strengthened. He tipped his chin up, facing these inquisitors. We like, it occurred to me, being challenged. That little adrenal rush washes away a lot of problematics and puts our life on the line, where it wants to be. Better see red than be dead. We like a fight because it shoves aside doubt.
Screen capture: “Crazy Earl” (Kieron Jecchinis) in a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987)
The Unbearable Lightness of War
Americans need to remember that war is the worst thing in the world. War is hell. War is this blood-spattered little girl screaming because her parents have just been shot dead by mistake at a checkpoint. War represents the complete defeat of the human spirit. Wars must never be fought unless absolutely necessary. Never. Never.
We need to remember this. For America’s wars have become weightless. They are fought by other people’s children, or by mercenaries, or by functionaries sitting inside mountains pushing buttons that launch missiles. They are no longer real. The way the Iraq War is ending, not with a bang but a barely audible whimper, is the way we make war now. The line between war and peace has disappeared. We are in a permanent state of quasi-war.
This is spiritually deadening. It is also dangerous. The unbearable lightness of war allows ideologues and fools to kill casually in our national name, without anyone paying attention. Since Iraq never happened, another Iraq is possible. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
What if They Ended a War and Nobody Cared?
Salon, 16 December 2011
Photo by Chris Hondros (1970-2011): TAL AFAR, IRAQ – JANUARY 18, 2005: An Iraqi girl screams after her parents were killed when U.S. Soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division out of Ft. Lewis, Washington, fired on their car when it failed to stop and came toward soldiers, despite warning shots, during a dusk patrol January 18, 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq. The car held an Iraqi family of which the mother and father were killed. According to the U.S. Army, six children in the in the car survived, one with a non-life threatening flesh wound. U.S. military said they are is investigating the incident.
