The End of Faith

1. Consider Abu Ghraib – the homoerotic themes of the torture, the complicity of intelligence officials, the tacit approval of the Administration, and most importantly, the dehumanization of Iraqis that was required to make ordinary Americans carry out the depravity. There’s a ton of stuff about this already written, so I won’t reinvent the wheel. My point is that torture is just atrocity, and that it is well documented. An interesting read is “A History of the Inquisition.” I don’t remember the author, but if you want to borrow it, let me know.

2. The Allies firebombed the civilian population in order to terrorize them. Period. The bombing consisted of incendiary bombs which created a firestorm of such violence that people, cars, and lorries were sucked into the inferno by the hurricane force winds generated by the updraft. A period of about three hours was allowed to elapse before a second wave of bombing began, this with the express intent of luring survivors into the open and killing those who rushed into the city to help. More people were killed in that attack than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. [Link] [Link] It was simply an act of naked terrorism.

History is written by the victors, and if the allies had lost, they would no doubt have been reviled as war criminals. So sayeth Robert McNamara (US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War) in the movie “The Fog of War.”

3. “We” being self assured Americans, who believe that we are more enlightened, more compassionate, more generous, more forgiving, walking more closely with Christ, more (pick your adjective) than “the other.” It’s all a self-serving lie.

4. Another interesting book: “A Terrible Love of War” by James Hillman (former director of the Jung Institute and author of “The Soul’s Code.”) Lavishly sourced, Hillman quotes sources from antiquity to the Gulf War trying to make sense of the primal forces that drive humanity into repeated bloodbaths. This book expanded my understanding of the innate characteristics of humans that, writ large and assembled into a critical mass, become unspeakable depravity.