Published on Sunday, April 6, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times Civilization's Obscene Ghost by Peter Brooks NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was a terrific shock to European intellectuals, many of whom spoke several languages, traveled widely and felt themselves equally citizens of French, English, Italian and German cultures. War had come to seem unthinkable in a world marked by rapid economic and social progress, a world in which European values had apparently spread across much of the globe. Sigmund Freud, lover of Sophocles and Shakespeare, trained in Paris and Vienna, was one of these intellectuals. Deeply disillusioned and depressed by the war, he sat down at his desk in early 1915 and wrote an essay he called "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death..." ...Some of Freud's observations are deeply unsettling, especially what he writes about the changed attitude toward death brought by war... ...War "strips us of the later accretions of civilization," Freud wrote, "and lays bare the primal man in each of us. It compels us once more to be heroes who cannot believe in their own death; it stamps strangers as enemies, whose death is to be brought about or desired; it tells us to disregard the death of those we love..." ...America's war with Iraq in the tender years of the 21st century comes as a shock to many of us. Like Europeans in 1914, we had come to believe that our country had to a large extent renounced war as an instrument of national policy. This may be a short and efficient war. But already there has been death, in limited numbers among our own troops, doubtless in far greater numbers among those we call our enemies. Homes, buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed and will continue to be, however precisely aimed our bombs; there will be hunger and disease; there will be the misery of refugee camps and orphanages... ...War may be a failure of conflict resolution by peaceful means. It is also a kind of failure of civilization. More here.
We had? Based on what? What a crock of shite. And Universal, can't you just put a link to CommonDreams.org in your sig, rather than giving everything on that site it's own thread?