By Joshua Gregory
Last night I attended a talk at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, bordering St James Park in central London. The subject of the talk was ‘The Atrocity of War’. The subtitle was ‘Are wars becoming more atrocious?’ This topic had the potential to tie into both my studies and my work at openDemocracy. Sadly, as is usual in these events, there was little discussion of the main issues involved, and I came away with my negative impressions of civil society in London reinforced.
After a brief introduction by George Kassimeris (a researcher at Wolverhampton University) came the first speaker, Joanna Bourke (Professor of History at Birkbeck College). Ms Bourke talked in a slightly unsettling sotto voce for twenty minutes. I had the impression that she spoke of many things, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what they were. Her main thesis seemed to be that the Western World was desensitised to violence by a century of increasing atrocity, characterised by the two World Wars. The only way that we can now be shocked is through photos like those of the torture victims of Abu Ghraib. Why? These contain a titillating and sexual aspect, which relates to our appreciation of the reality TV programme, Big Brother. Otherwise we are numbed to horror, and are quite happy to let human rights be squashed by the needs of the civilising programme of the West, such as the need to torture ‘terrorists’ in order to gain information from them about their next attack.
Although it was not quite clear whether this argument was mere assertion (although she quoted some brief snippets of de Beauvoir, Hobsbawm and Dershowitz to support her points), the main problem was that she limited herself to wars fought by the West, specifically WWI and WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. But what about atrocities carried out in the course of civil wars, or ‘new wars’, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa or Yugoslavia where, arguably, greater evil (if that word can be used) is carried out on a much larger scale than in any American prison? In her last sentences, she reeled off a list of possible general causes of atrocities (military impunity, alternately failure of leadership, or unquestioning obedience, racism, and some others), but the analysis went no deeper. She did not address the issue of whether it is unquestioning obedience that creates the right environment for atrocity to thrive (such as was arguably the case with Nazi Germany, or Rwanda), or conversely an atmosphere of complete breakdown in discipline (as in many current ‘new wars’).
The second speaker, Crispin Black, had been in the Falklands, and though clearly a nice man, by making bland assertions that all the people he knew in the Army (bar those of the Air Force) were ‘thoroughly decent chaps’, he added nothing concrete to the debate. However, he did make the interesting point that increasing use of air power has desensitised the army to the effects of their weapons. This point was backed up by the final speaker, Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and writer for openDemocracy. As an actual victim of torture, Mr Begg is more qualified than most to give an opinion on the topic. He made the cogent point that where our technology strives towards methods of warfare which killing more people with less and less danger to the person who pushes the button (such as nuclear weapons and aerial bombardment with cluster bombs), it is no surprise that the people who wage war are becoming inured to the actual effects of their violence.
My personal feeling is, firstly, it is a fact that wars have always been barbarous. However it is likely that with growing coverage by the global media (including TV, internet video, and photo sharing websites), we will bring more exposure to atrocities and eventually pressure to castigate those who commit them. Secondly, to say that we are becoming inured to violence seems to support an unnecessarily pessimistic view of human nature, and the assertion seldom seems to be backed up with any evidence. Thirdly, there are several theoretical frameworks which look at why humans sometimes do very horrible things, but none were addressed in any rigorous fashion last night.
So there was no sense that the speakers were willing to debate with each other, and after a few good (and a few loony) questions, the event trickled out. It was unfortunate that the focus of the talk was not really what it had purported to be; in fact the talk had been convened, it seemed, to sell a new book, ‘The Barbarisation of Warfare’. I had a hunch that the audience was mainly there to have their preconceptions of the Americans and the French confirmed (any mention of these apparently loathsome races seemed to prompt a chorus of tutting, sighing and shaking of heads). Not subscribing to those preconceptions, I walked away feeling a bit hollow, as if I’d had a packet of crisps for dinner.
