Hedges Profile

(Page 3 of 3)

“My son was in first grade when I covered the war in Sarajevo and he was aware that his father was in danger. It was really hard for him,” Hedges said. “It’s dangerous work, especially for a father.” He also has an 11-year-old daughter.

Hedges joined the investigative unit of the Times based in Paris and later was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He taught at the New York University journalism school and Princeton.

In 2002 he published War is A Force that Gives Us Meaning. It was a book in the wake of September 11 only he could have written: a treatise on war and the commonalities of human conflict that span from the ancient Athenian empire to the Nazis to the Balkans. The book shows that our present sliver of time is not unique; our problems are not new. It compares the mechanics of modern wars to the great works of western literature: Homer, Catullus, Auden, Shakespeare, Yeats. The book is both the observations of a deeply-learned man who has witnessed more horrible things than most, and the therapeutic purging of those horrible things by someone who feels it corroding him from the inside out.

War is a Force was a very important book for him because he came in touch with his own demons,” Brown, who helped edit the book, said. “He really freed himself from some of the memories that he’s buried so deep in him.”

War is a Force was also the work of someone who, for twenty-five years, bottled up his opinions while writing on world affairs through the objective voice of the reporter. The uncorking of that bottle came shortly after the book was published, when Hedges began publicly speaking out against the invasion of Iraq. The Rockford speech, which shares many lines with War is a Force, was identical to many he had given prior. But Rockford was the first time he was speaking to an audience that wasn’t sympathetic.  

Since leaving reporting to write books, online columns and participate in speaking tours, the stridency of Hedges opposition to the current administration sometimes borders on shrill, undermining his expertise and making him an easy target for the right. The May 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial wrote, “Mr. Hedges is not what one would call a rigorous thinker: His bill of indictment against his country included ‘the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East’ even though many of those dictators opposed our toppling one of their own in Iraq.”

Not all of Hedges’ predictions are as accurate as the ones he made in the Rockford speech. In 2004, participating in a series of speeches titled “The Cost of War,” Hedges warned that a military draft was imminent. In an October 2006 column for Truthdig.com headlined, “Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse,” Hedges speculated that the U.S. would begin an invasion of Iran by early November. The last line of the column reads, “these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.”

But after a reporting career in which he filed from over fifty countries, Hedges is nothing if not ambitious. And if in the scope of his efforts he over-reaches, there are those who bring him back to earth. While editing an early draft of “War is a Force”, Brown drew large Xs over four pages and wrote at the bottom, “Frankly, you are over your head.” The subject of those pages, Brown said, was American religion.

“He thought he was going to be an expert on American religion and being an expert on American religion is something that you can’t do in less than ten years,” Brown said. “And you’re not very likely to get it right then.”

Hedges’ next book, due out in January is titled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

“I went around the country looking at the movement and in twenty-five years they’ve moved from the fringes of American society to the corridors of power,” Hedges said. “I look at them certainly in light of someone who came out of seminary and who understands despotic movements, having spent many years in the Middle East and the Balkans.”

For his next book he plans to write about the American prison system.

“I say what I say,” Hedges added. “I’m not trying to gild it. That’s what I do.”