Current Affairs

Chris Hedges, who appeared on this program a few months back after the publication of his book Our Class, returns to discuss his powerful new book The Greatest Evil is War, which shows the true face of war and exposes the propagandistic narratives that help to sustain and escalate wars. Hedges, a veteran war correspondent, shows us the people who actually do the fighting and the dying, from those maimed and traumatized for life to those who must collect the corpses from the battlefield. He shows how every war is presented by each side as a battle of the forces of light against the forces of darkness, and why the real story is almost always much more complicated. He shows how the darkest facts of war are kept from public view, and instead the population is presented with an image of war as something heroic and exciting. He shows how war memorials and the media get us to "admire the despicable beauty of weapons systems without seeing what they do to human bodies," and explains how those who benefit from continu