essay from ancient greece to iraq the power of words in wartime

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ESSAY; From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime

By Robin Tolmach Lakoff

• May 18, 2004

An American soldier refers to an Iraqi prisoner as ''it.'' A general speaks not of ''Iraqi fighters'' but of ''the enemy.'' A weapons manufacturer doesn't talk about people but about ''targets.''

Bullets and bombs are not the only tools of war. Words, too, play their part.

Human beings are social animals, genetically hard-wired to feel compassion toward others. Under normal conditions, most people find it very difficult to kill.

But in war, military recruits must be persuaded that killing other people is not only acceptable but even honorable.

The language of war is intended to bring about that change, and not only for soldiers in the field. In wartime, language must be created to enable combatants and noncombatants alike to see the other side as killable, to overcome the innate queasiness over the taking of human life. Soldiers, and those who remain at home, learn to call their enemies by names that make them seem not quite human -- inferior, contemptible and not like ''us.''

The specific words change from culture to culture and war to war. The names need not be obviously demeaning. Just the fact that we can name them gives us a sense of superiority and control. If, in addition, we give them nicknames, we can see them as smaller, weaker and childlike -- not worth taking seriously as fully human.

The Greeks and Romans referred to everyone else as ''barbarians'' -- etymologically those who only babble, only go ''bar-bar.'' During the American Revolution, the British called the colonists ''Yankees,'' a term with a history that is still in dispute. While the British intended it disparagingly, the Americans, in perhaps the first historical instance of reclamation, made the word their own and gave it a positive spin, turning the derisive song ''Yankee Doodle'' into our first, if unofficial, national anthem.

In World War I, the British gave the Germans the nickname ''Jerries,'' from the first syllable of German. In World War II, Americans referred to the Japanese as ''Japs.''

The names may refer to real or imagined cultural and physical differences that emphasize the ridiculous or the repugnant. So in various wars, the British called the French ''Frogs.'' Germans have been called ''Krauts,'' a reference to weird and smelly food. The Vietnamese were called ''slopes'' and ''slants.'' The Koreans were referred to simply as ''gooks.''

The war in Iraq has added new examples. Some American soldiers refer to the Iraqis as ''hadjis,'' used in a derogatory way, apparently unaware that the word, which comes from the Arabic term for a pilgrimage to Mecca, is used as a term of respect for older Muslim men.

The Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz suggested that the more clearly we see other members of our own species as individuals, the harder we find it to kill them.

So some terms of war are collective nouns, encouraging us to see the enemy as an undifferentiated mass, rather than as individuals capable of suffering. Crusaders called their enemy ''the Saracen,'' and in World War I, the British called Germans ''the Hun.''

American soldiers are trained to call those they are fighting against ''the enemy.'' It is easier to kill an enemy than an Iraqi.

The word ''enemy'' itself provides the facelessness of a collective noun. Its non-specificity also has a fear-inducing connotation; enemy means simply ''those we are fighting,'' without reference to their identity.

The terrors and uncertainties of war make learning this kind of language especially compelling for soldiers on the front. But civilians back home also need to believe that what their country is doing is just and necessary, and that the killing they are supporting is in some way different from the killing in civilian life that is rightly punished by the criminal justice system. The use of the language developed for military purposes by civilians reassures them that war is not murder.

The linguistic habits that soldiers must absorb in order to fight make atrocities like those at Abu Ghraib virtually inevitable. The same language that creates a psychological chasm between ''us'' and ''them'' and enables American troops to kill in battle, makes enemy soldiers fit subjects for torture and humiliation. The reasoning is: They are not really human, so they will not feel the pain.

Once language draws that line, all kinds of mistreatment become imaginable, and then justifiable. To make the abuses at Abu Ghraib unthinkable, we would have to abolish war itself.

English 1000

“From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime”: Asking a Question

Ever since we were kids we were taught to ‘think before you speak.’ Kids don’t always realize the power of language, and yet I’m not sure adults do either. In Robin Tolmach Lakoff’s essay, “From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime,” she talks about how groups who fight in wars label who they are fighting as “the enemy”, “it”, and “targets.” This essay leaves you questioning if the way we use words changes our perceptions of the people within our world, as to which Lakoff says yes.

In the beginning of the essay Lakoff says that “Human beings are social animals, genetically hardwired to feel compassion toward others. Under normal conditions, most people find it very difficult to kill.” This is interesting because she is speaking about the subject of war and there are mass killings that take place there. The piece also says that “bullets and bombs are not the only tools of war. Words, too, play their part.” The words they use to name the people in which they are fighting are meant to dehumanize them, tricking soldiers to think that they are not like them, that they themselves are superior, and that in a way ‘the enemy’ is some sort of creature. Using words like those make it easier for soldiers to kill.

Lakoff seems to make the argument that what we are doing by dehumanizing people in order to kill them is not how human beings should be treated and that this will most likely cause issues in the future. If you think about it, it kind of already has become a norm in our world, not even limited to war. It happens with sexuality; People attack homosexuals and use such negative linguistics such as “fag” or “dyke”to make it seem as if they are less acceptable in our country than another american that is heterosexual. People, especially in the teens, also use the word ‘gay’ to mean stupid, as if that is what a gay person is. It also happens with race; Mexicans are called “wetbacks” and blacks are called “niggers.” These are words that have been associated with negative connotations in our country and are still continued to be used, because some think that the color of skin can make you less human. Lastly, this dehumanization of people happens with bullying; short people are called “midgets”, girls are called “sluts” and “whores”, others are called “loser”, “fatso”, “nerd”, “freak”, etc. There are already issues associated with bullying including poor self-esteem, depression, and suicide. These labels are overpowering the fact that they are a human being. That one word has now replaced the actual characteristics and story behind the person with whom you are connecting that word with.

Although some people may think that using words that dehumanize people, even our enemy, is helpful, Lakoff argues that it is not. The pattern of this poor tradition is continuing in all places over the world and in all different situations. It is already causing problems, and if it continues it can place all individuals against each other and we will lose humanity.

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6 thoughts on “ “from ancient greece to iraq, the power of words in wartime”: asking a question ”.

I loved your opening paragraph it was a very good attention grabber. I do believe that the way we words things can totally change the meaning of something and easily change someones perspective. I too think it is very interesting how people in war have to change their entire mind set when they are fighting. They have to entirely leave their beliefs and everything they’ve been taught and learned from right and wrong to realize whats best for himself and our country.v

I extremely enjoyed reading this because even though we both blogged about the same reading, in a lot of ways they were totally different… but then again similar in ways too. It’s eye opening to see how you evaluated the reading in a different way than I did. Really enjoyed reading this!

Overall, I loved the point you were making in your essay. What really had me thinking “YES” was the connection you made between how people in the service dehumanize others by using negative connotations toward them and how we, as every day people, seem to dehumanize others by using incredibly derogatory terms toward them. It is definitely another issue that needs to be addressed today so I am glad you were able to make this tie-in. Great job!

I love how you tied the story to something that we all have been told. And by relating to something that adults tell kids, you send a strong message and really open the readers eyes to a whole new perspective.

I very much enjoyed your post and was imminently intrigued by your intro paragraph. I like the way you used a childhood moral that most everyone learned in comparison to adults. I did a similar blog and too found it almost dehumanizing the way someone could kill in cold blood based on the word they are called. Good Job!

My favorite part of your entire post was the first sentence. It totally made me stop and think, and you are so right in your thinking that adults teach their children to mind their language, but don’t always follow through with that themselves. On the other hand, I still think its really hard for soldiers not to use this kind of language and still do the job that they need to do, I feel like it is a necessity. Does that make it right? Probably not, but there is definitely a fine line.

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Experiencing War: Trauma and Society from Ancient Greece to the Iraq War

Heather sebo , the university of melbourne. [email protected].

Table of Contents

This volume of ten essays derives from the conference, “Achilles in Iraq: War and Peace in Ancient Greece and Today”, held at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in April 2004. A sense of mission, which no doubt reflects the atmosphere of the conference, is palpable in the present volume, which editor Michael Cosmopoulos describes as, “a contribution towards raising awareness about and promoting understanding of the catastrophic impact” of war and violence “on our individual and collective lives” (1). Contributors are passionate about the fact that the lives and well-being of young soldiers depend upon the votes of a civilian population that is often ignorant of, or apathetic about, the realities of (and reasons for and against) war. Specifically, the collection aims to use ancient Greek understandings to think about “the ways in which war affects our lives at the personal, social, and political level” (3). It draws on a diversity of expertise—from eminent scholars in the field of ancient Greek and Roman warfare, to non-classicist academics, to practitioners whose primary commitment is to the prevention and treatment of psychological injury in American soldiers.

It must be said that the topics covered do not accord with the brief as Cosmopoulos states it, or with the promise of the title. As a glance at the table of contents will confirm, the emphasis is overwhelmingly on army personnel and the conduct of war: five chapters (4, 5, 6, 7, 9) deal with combat experience (this includes Col. Westhusing’s chapter on the moral stance of the ideal American warrior), five chapters (3, 7, 8, 9, 10) with the causes of psychologically disabling combat trauma (with some overlap between the two groups), and two chapters (8,10) specifically with its proper treatment and prevention. The remaining chapters (1, 2) are concerned with the American public’s ignorance of the realities of war and the kinds of rhetorical appeal which won support for the invasion of Iraq. Important though these issues are, they do not constitute a consideration of the impact of war on “our individual and collective lives”. For instance, there is no mention of the economic, environmental, and social costs of war, or the strain on communities and individuals of coping long-term with traumatized and/or disabled family members, or the continuing danger to civilians posed by the lethal debris of modern war. A brief account of individual chapters follows.

Thomas Palaima (“Civilian Knowledge of War and Violence in Ancient Athens and Modern America”) contrasts the American culture of censorship and media “spin” with the unflinching truth of Homeric depiction of death in combat or Euripides’ confronting portrayal in Trojan Women of the consequences of defeat for a civilian population. He observes that in fifth-century Athens, where military service was universal for all adult males, no one was exempt from the sacrifices and suffering of war.

Palaima also offers a detailed discussion of the dishonestly sentimentalizing media accounts of the death of 2nd. Lt. Therrel ‘Shane’ Childers, the first US casualty in Iraq. However, he represents the annual state funeral ceremonies held in Athens for the war dead as an honest acknowledgement of casualties rather than, as I suggest, the vehicle for a similar kind of spin. The funeral oration customary on these occasions, the epitaphios logos , is famously concerned with the heroization of the warrior dead and the glorification of the state in a way perhaps reminiscent of the media and government establishment culture he critiques so powerfully.

Moon and Collins (“Moving the State to War”) compare Thucydides’ account of the debate between Alcibiades and Nicias over whether Athens should invade Sicily (215 BCE) with the differing approaches of George W. Bush, the US Congress, and the UN in the dispute over pre-emptive war against Iraq (2002-03 CE). Their comparison is loosely informed by Aristotle’s analysis in On Rhetoric of the principles of successful political persuasion and the role of emotion in the formation of rational judgements. The authors conclude that in both cases rationally inferior arguments were successful because they were coupled with emotionally powerful appeals; in fifth century Athens, to shame and patriotism and in modern America, to fear and patriotism. Possibly because too much is attempted in too short a space, the language of this piece is frustratingly woolly, for instance, a speech that relies on “empirical” evidence is described as a “logical proof” (46); “logical” is used as synonymous with “rational” (51, 54, 55) and “proof” as synonymous with “argument” (55). There are also editing issues, for instance, one reads “passivity” where sense demands a word like “energy” (39), “ignorance” for “innocence” (49), “insure” for “ensure” (50).

Nadejda Popov (“The Place of Soldier Speeches in a Democracy at War. Aeschylus and Michael Moore”) compares the Messenger’s tale, at Agamemnon 551-82, of his suffering at Troy with the complaints of soldiers in Iraq compiled by Michael Moore in Will They Ever Trust Us Again? Letters from the War Zone . 1 This is potentially an interesting discussion, especially as the Messenger’s account of the siege conforms to fifth-century, rather than Homeric, practise and (as Popov notes) probably alludes to the contemporary Egyptian campaigns. Unfortunately, instead of allowing the telling similarities in soldiers’ experience to emerge in full acknowledgement of the patent disparity between the two “texts”, the author spends a great deal of time attempting to demonstrate that the “texts” themselves (she persists in calling them “case studies”) are equivalent. Thus, for instance, in Popov’s view, Moore’s edited collection of emails and letters (with introduction) is “in many ways a literary creation” which, in the (entirely hypothetical) circumstance that it were ever made into a documentary film, would be comparable to Aeschylus’ thirty line passage (from the Messenger’s 160 line, three-part speech), even in terms of “performance…dimension” (64).

Popov’s claim that Aeschylus’ dual “purpose” in lines 551-82 was to convince the Athenians not to go to war with Sparta and not to maintain their empire is questionable in its implication that a conception of Athenian empire existed in 458 BCE and indefensible in its assertion of authorial intention (75). 2 In her view, Aeschylus’ “goal” is analogous to Moore’s attempt to influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. With similar imprecision, Popov construes Odysseus’ silencing of Thersites at Iliad 2.225-42 as evidence for censorship of soldier speech in democratic fifth century Athens and as equivalent to the modern punishment of court marshal for public criticism by soldiers of the military in times of war. The essay is also marred by infelicities of language, as for example, “amount of the similarities” (63), feelings “hinted upon” (72), soldiers letters “eradiate a uniform message” (75).

Kurt Raaflaub’s discussion (“Homer and Thucydides on Peace and Just War”) is informed by the tragic observation that peace movements tend to fail. His teasing out of the complex factors that work against arbitration between opposing armies in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and Homer’s Iliad emphasizes that, ironically, men are spurred to fight by the notion of “just war”, by the belief that they are in the right. Less idealistically, men also fight if they believe they can win. Raaflaub observes that the “deep yearning” of the rank and file of both Greeks and Trojans for peace in the Iliad does not lead to an end to fighting and, even more sobering, that the eloquent opposition to war mounted by comic and tragic playwrights in fifth century Athens failed to influence the political decisions of their audiences. His essay leaves the reader with a certain hopelessness about the possibility of peace.

Friend (“The Notion of a Fair Fight in Ancient Greece and in Modern Warfare”) contrasts the Greek hoplite ideal of the disciplined phalanx, hand-to-hand combat, and all-out decisive battle with the attritional, or guerrilla, approach to war in which individuals do not scruple to retreat and the aim is to wear down the enemy. Friend emphasizes the continuities between the values of ancient Greek and modern soldiers, especially their common admiration for an enemy who “fights by the rules”. However, the author appears far too invested in the honour codes he describes and, finally, to betray a serious lack of objectivity when he writes of the Viet Cong guerrilla: “He uses cowardly tactics and tries to avoid battle. Just as the Greek hoplite despised light troops because their refused to stand their ground, the modern soldier hates guerrillas for the same reason” (113). One cannot help but wonder how fair a fight can be if one side is hopelessly outmatched by the other in weaponry and war technology.

Col. Ted Westhusing’s lengthy contribution (“The American Warrior. Winning the Nation’s Wars, for ‘This We Will Defend'”) is included, almost unedited, in respectful tribute to his memory. The essay is a patriotic statement of the moral attitude of an ideally “virtuous” American warrior. Westhusing’s major concern is to define an ethical standpoint from which a warrior may violate societies’ injunction against the taking of life, and be the most effective possible fighter, without relinquishing self-respect and humanity. In his view, this involves management of the passions and natural selfishness through the education of reason, exhaustive physical training, embracing of “communally sanctioned Law”, and ability to see the integrity of unfamiliar social structures. Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, Westhusing’s high minded idealism is belied by the contemporary and historical real world information so abundantly provided by Tritle, Matsakis, and Chrissanthos.

Lawrence Tritle (“Two Armies in Iraq: Tommy Franks in the Footsteps of Alexander the Great”) tellingly compares the ongoing American led invasion of Iraq with Alexander’s lightning swift conquest in 325 BCE. He demonstrates that after the conquest of Babylon/Bagdad Alexander quashed the early stages of a widespread insurgency similar to that which has proved crippling for the US and her allies. He writes of the suffering and large casualties in the civilian population past and present.

Tritle also focuses on the brutalizing and desensitizing effect on soldiers of prolonged military campaigning and the unspeakable terror of constant exposure to violent death. He proposes that the “explosion of conspiracies, imagined or other, that emerge in the sources” is evidence that Alexander himself was suffering from the paranoia and distortion of judgement symptomatic of PTSD (179). Tritle concludes by detailing the statistics for PTSD, depression, and suicide in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, concluding that American troops “are experiencing the same sort of trauma that Alexander and his army found there, and has been the case in every war since” (183).

Matsakis (“Three Faces of Post-traumatic Stress: Ares, Hercules, and Hephaestus”) claims that these three mythic figures are psychic models which can provide new insights into post-traumatic stress. (The author gives Ares and Hephaestus their Greek names, but uses the Roman form Hercules and makes no category distinction between the gods and the hero.) Matsakis’ concern is with the treatment of PTSD, especially in veterans, and I am willing to accept that her approach may make for effective therapy. But her version of Greek myth is entirely a therapist’s artefact and is in no sense a dialogue with ancient understandings. Matsakis takes no account of the contexts for the stories she chooses to tell, of the complexities of cultural difference, or of the wider intellectual discussion about the nature of myth. She writes as though Ares, Hercules, and Hephaestus were historical people with psychological autonomy and personal agency. She tells us that Heracles’ “gluttony”, “binge drinking”, and sexual promiscuity are “motivated by guilt” but that Hephaestus, who suffers from “depression, rage and self-loathing” as a result of parental abuse and rejection, is able to find an “outlet” in his creative work and make “a positive contribution to society” (197, 212, 221). She claims (without any sense of incongruity) that Ares becomes the god of war largely because of “being confined in a bottle for thirteen months as a toddler” (201).

Chrissanthos’ material (“Aeneas in Iraq: Comparing The Roman And Modern Battle Experience”) is similar to Tritle’s (above). He compares the experiences of soldiers from WWI through to Vietnam with their counterparts in Caesar’s Roman campaigns (an exception to the volume’s focus on Greece). Chrissanthos links the unspecified illnesses that afflicted Caesar’s “‘whole’ army” with the psychological and physical malaise typically suffered by modern soldiers during and after active service (238). He broaches the issue of alcohol and drugs abuse, the practise of self-harm and, at the other end of the spectrum, the perpetration of atrocities on those perceived to be the enemy. Chrissanthos discusses desertion, mutiny, combat refusal, and even the murder of “incompetent or ineffective superiors” (245). He also notes the phenomenon, then and now, of veteran movements for peace, as an entirely positive and constructive manifestation of battle trauma.

Jonathan Shay (“Homer’s Leaders in American Forces: Leadership and Prevention of Psychological and Moral Injury”), a psychologist and advocate for the America’s servicemen and women, takes the view that, if we cannot abolish war, the next best way to reduce psychological injury in soldiers after combat—he rejects the term PTSD—is to establish a culture of trust, especially between service members and their leaders (272). By way of illustration, Shay compares the leadership styles of Achilleus, Agamemnon, and Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey . Shay’s account clearly has direct application to American military practice, but this unapologetically didactic purpose leads him to simplify and shift the emphasis of the Homeric portrayals. Ignoring Achilles’ tragic indecisiveness, he describes him as a blunt, truthful leader who cares for the men and who, if he had lived, would have brought most of them “home alive and in good heart” (265). Conflating the somewhat different portrayals of Odysseus in the Iliad and Odyssey , Shay represents him as, by contrast, one who habitually lies to his men, will take them into danger for personal gain, and brings no one home alive. Finally, Agamemnon, the Commander-in-Chief, the “almost perfectly bad leader”, will take no responsibility for his failure effectively to blockade Troy, violates the armies’ “moral order” by refusing to ransom Chryseis, and publicly humiliates Achilleus (266). Shay interprets the stampede for the ships that follows Agamemnon’s trial of the armies’ loyalty as a predictable loss of morale resulting from this betrayal of “‘what’s right'” (264).

Apart from its narrowness of scope, my other criticisms of the collection are, first, that contributors do not acknowledge the obvious differences between ancient and modern war technology; that we moderns have far greater destructive capacity, that modern war has a global impact, and that the stakes are perhaps as high as the ultimate survival of humanity. A second, related, regret—as my comments on individual chapters have no doubt indicated—is that many contributions look for exact matches, or, equally misleading, straightforward contrasts, between the ancient material and modern American cultural templates. Too few chapters rise to the opportunity genuinely to “think with” the complexity, otherness , and nuance of the ancient material and thereby to arrive at truly surprising, even paradigm shifting, insights.

1 . M. Moore. Will They Ever Trust Us Again? Letters from the War Zone. Simon and Schuster: New York, 2004.

2 . For the difficulties associated with the term “empire” in the context of fifth century Athens—and of determining when Athens may be said to lead an empire rather than an alliance, see: P. Low (ed.), The Athenian Empire. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2008.

The power of words: listening during wartime

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Plato wanted to banish all poets from his ideal Republic, and having just watched an advance copy of a new documentary film, “Voices in Wartime,” I suspect that President Bush would also like to ban poets from his less-than-ideal republic.

“Voices in Wartime,” scheduled for nationwide theatrical release in March, examines the pain of war through the words of poets since 2300 BC, often set against archival footage of men and nations at war. Ultimately, the film is as much a paean to the power of poetry as it is an exploration (and condemnation) of the futility of war.

Indeed, Lt. Gen. William Lenox, superintendent of West Point, speaks on camera about how poetry expresses better than any other medium the full range of emotions that soldiers experience in combat.

“Joy, elation, horror, fear .... What literary genre allows you to portray that better than poetry?” he asks at one point.

Later, the general says, “Poetry provides us a great vehicle to teach ... cadets, as much as anyone can, what combat is like.”

Although it is stridently opposed to the war in Iraq, “Voices in Wartime” is at its most compelling not when it’s taking a political position (or quoting poets) on this particular war but when it’s talking more generally about poetry and war, often against a visual backdrop of bombs falling, helicopters hovering, missiles flying and men dying. It is a strong, riveting film, but insofar as an antiwar film with a lot of combat footage can avoid blood and gore, it does so. It’s not the D-day landing in “Saving Private Ryan.”

While writer-director Rick King’s stated objective -- “The movie aims to change the way people look at the impact of war” -- is probably unrealistic, he has made a powerful film that repeatedly demonstrates and examines that impact.

The first lady’s invitation

The starting point for the film -- and the reason it will not be an Oval Office favorite during this administration -- was the invitation that Laura Bush extended to a few poets last year to come to the White House for a poetry symposium that would pay tribute to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes.

The first lady -- a former librarian, long active in various literacy efforts -- may have envisioned a Kennedyesque celebration of literature and culture in the United States. But when poet Sam Hamill received his invitation, he says he was “overcome with a kind of nausea.”

“Only the day before,” he said at the time, “I had read a lengthy report on George Bush’s proposed ‘shock and awe’ attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians. I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.”

Hamill called on poets to “Fill the air with poems so thick even bombs can’t fall through.” The poems, he said, would be compiled in an anthology and presented to the White House on the day of the poetry symposium. He also invited 50 other poets to join him in turning the symposium and tribute into a protest against the then-about-to-begin war in Iraq.

Hamill says in the movie that the president’s wife was “stupid, naive, virtually illiterate” if she thought she could honor such “profoundly political” poets as Whitman, Hughes and Dickinson without triggering a political protest over the war.

Moments later, the film quotes from a poem by Hughes:

We will take you and kill you, expendable

We will fill you full of lead, expendable

And when you’re dead, in the nice, cold ground,

We’ll put a name above your head

If your head can be found

As the protest movement grew -- Hamill says he received 1,500 antiwar poems in 36 hours, and the sheer volume crashed his e-mail site -- Laura Bush decided to cancel the tribute.

In response, poets conducted hundreds of readings around the world to protest the war.

The filmmakers, led by executive producer Andrew Himes, a Microsoft web veteran, initially wanted to make a short film about these antiwar poets but then decided that the larger “dynamic relationship between poetry and war” was a more compelling story.

A passage from “The Iliad,” the earliest graphic, comprehensive account of battle, is read in a voice-over as battle unfolds on the screen. The 73-minute film offers similar juxtapositions with brief excerpts from speeches by President Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War.

Other speakers talk about war as “a glorification of death,” about “the collective euphoria or madness when a country goes to war” and about how, in time of war, “We lose sight of our humanity, our limitations, our poverty, and believe that we are able to know the over-arching truth. We lose something fundamental.”

More than 30 poets appear, are quoted or cited in the film -- among them not only Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes and Homer but Tennyson (“Into the valley of death rode the 600 ...”) and such contemporary figures as Chris Abani of Nigeria, Sinan Antoon of Iraq, Rachel Bentham from England, Sampurna Chattarji from India and Americans Randall Jarrell, David Connolly and Marie Howe.

From Jarrell’s “Losses”:

We read our mail and counted up our missions --

In bombers named for girls, we burned

The cities we had learned about in school --

Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among

The people we had killed and never seen

A real eye-opener

The role of poetry, the film says, is “to serve as a brief on behalf of the living” and “to remind us of our humanity. Poetry takes us back to the center of who we are as human beings.” Or as Hamill says, “Poets see things from angles that others don’t pause long enough to look at.”

One poet in “Voices of War” speaks movingly of her father and his war wounds. Another of the recurring nightmares he’s suffered since watching two buddies die in Vietnam. “Poetry,” he says, “is how I try to stay sane, to make sense of things.”

For me, the most moving section of the film deals with World War I poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon -- their military service, their poetry and their friendship. Sassoon wrote poems and letters protesting that the “war of defense” he had enlisted in at 28 as a cavalry trooper had become “a war of aggression and conquest.”

Although there are hints in the movie that there were legitimate reasons to fight World Wars I and II, the writers argue that such legitimacy no longer obtains, and that since World War II, civilians, rather than soldiers, have been “the primary victims of war.”

The film suggests that the United States is a major contributor to this sad fact. The U.S., it says, “exports more arms than the rest of the world combined” and is thus responsible for much of the violence and unrest in the world today.

However true this is, it comes across on film as more political polemic than antiwar poetry, and -- for me -- it served to undercut the otherwise clearheaded if inevitably poignant message of the rest of the film.

David Shaw can be reached at [email protected]. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to www.latimes.com/shaw-media.

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• The Journal of Military History

Military Honour and the Conduct of War: From Ancient Greece to Iraq (review)

• Bertram Wyatt-Brown
• Society for Military History
• Volume 71, Number 2, April 2007
• pp. 603-605
• 10.1353/jmh.2007.0171
• View Citation

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Formal Academic Summary Directions   Spring 2011  WR 121 Handout - Prof. Cora Agatucci

1. Assignment Topic: Write your Formal Academic Summary on one of the following essays:

Robin Tolmach Lakoff, "From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime" (in Muller pp. 7-9)

Benedict Carey, "Judging Honesty by Words, Not Fidgets" (in Muller pp. 9-12)

Mortimer J. Adler, "How to Mark a Book" (in Muller pp.13-16)

2. Assignment Length:   No longer than 1 word-processed and double spaced page using standard margins, fonts & point sizes-- e.g. Times New Roman 12 point or Arial 10 point or Calibri 12 point.  NOTE:   Grade penalty will be exacted IF Formal Academic Summary, including required MLA style header and double-spaced correctly formatted MLA-style bibliographical entry, exceeds length limit of one (1) double-spaced page.

3. Assignment Genre and Manuscript Form Requirements:   Review Cora's Example Formal Academic Summary , including these features:  

• Label your assignment with an MLA Style Header (may be single spaced or double spaced) in the upper left-hand corner of your document:

Juanita Student WR 121, Prof. C. Agatucci Formal Academic Summary 7 April 2011

--your summary must be double spaced and formatted as one single paragraph .

• formally re introduce the author’s full name and the article’s full title ,
• present the topic focus and identify thesis of the essay being summarized.

According to Lakoff, in Lakoff’s opinion, Robin Tolmach Lakoff claims that  . . . Carey states, Lakoff asserts, Adler contends, asks, observes, maintains, explains, questions, objects . . .  Adler points out, Carey compares, Lakoff contrasts, confirms, calls for, denies, concedes, counters . . . The author believes, emphasizes, supports, argues, affirms, contends, counters  . . .

4. Assignment Content & Coherence Requirements: 

• Be selective . Summarize the argument's thesis and ONLY major supporting points, and do NOT include minor points, details, specific examples.
• R emember the double-spaced 1-page limit!   The author's thesis/case claim should be presented in the first sentence/s of your summary, and then remaining space you are allotted should be devoted to representing the major supporting points of the text that you consider most important to the author's essay thesis.
• Do NOT quote extensively from the author's text.  Use your own words to summarize and paraphrase the author's thesis and main points. (See also "Paraphrasing" and "Summarizing" in our Muller textbook, pp. 23-26.)
• Be accurate when you summarize and paraphrase, and be careful NOT to misrepresent the author’s main points, purpose, emphases. Please read and re-read the essay, be sure you understand it (or ask questions if you don't), before you prepare your Formal Academic Summary.
• Be objective : Do NOT give your own opinions on the author's ideas, and do NOT analyze or evaluate the writing quality of the essay.  Stick to representing, accurately and objectively, the essay's main content points in your Formal Academic Summary.
• Be concise and clear :  Do NOT be wordy or repeat points unnecessarily or quote extensively, BUT do NOT sacrifice clarity for conciseness in the process.
• Be organized & coherent .   Do NOT slavishly follow the author’s order of presentation in the argument being summarized if it deviates from the requirements of this assignment (e.g. your summary is supposed to present the author's thesis/case claim in the first sentence/s and then represent the major supporting points within the length limit).  Do use appropriate transitions to indicate relationships among author’s main points represented in your Formal Academic Summary.

5 . Assignment Clarity & Correctness of Written Expression will also be considered in grading, so please proofread and edit your final draft carefully before submitting for grading.

MLA-style bibliographical entry , which must be double spaced & correctly formatted , for Lakoff:

MLA-style bibliographical entry , which must be double spaced & correctly formatted , for Carey:

See also Formal Academic Summary Evaluation Checklist

Spring 2011 WR 121 Syllabus | Course Plan | WR 121 Course Home Page  

You are here:  Formal Academic Summary Directions - Spring 2011 WR 121 handout URL of this webpage: http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/ wr121 /FormalAcademicSummaryDir.htm Last Updated: 29 March 2011

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