Chris Hedges Biography War Correspondent, writer, peace activist. 1956 –
"Once we sign on for war’s crusade, once we see ourselves on the side of the angels, once we embrace a theological or ideological belief system that defines itself as the embodiment of goodness and light, it is only a matter of how we will carry out murder."
Chris Hedges, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury Vt. He graduated from Colgate University with a BA in English Literature and went on to receive a Master of Divinity from Harvard. He has an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California.
Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America , the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was an early and outspoken critic of the US plan to invade and occupy Iraq and called the press coverage at the time “shameful cheerleading.” In 2002, he was part of a team of reporters for The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism and that same year he won an Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. In 2003, shortly after the war in Iraq began, Hedges was asked to give the commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Ill. He told the graduating class “…we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power and security.” He went on to state that “This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation.” As he spoke several hundred members of the audience began jeering and booing. His microphone was cut twice. Two young men rushed the stage to try to prevent him from speaking and Hedges had to cut short his address. He was escorted off campus by security officials before the awarding of diplomas. This event made national news and he became a lightning rod not only for right wing pundits and commentators, but also mainstream newspapers. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial which denounced his anti-war stance and the New York Times issued a formal reprimand which required that Hedges cease speaking about the war. The reprimand condemned his remarks as undermining the paper’s impartiality. Hedges resigned not long afterwards and became a senior fellow at the Nation Institute.
Hedges’ is the author of the 2002 best seller War is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, which is an examination of the poison of war and what it does to individuals and societies. He states that war is the pornography of violence, a powerful narcotic that “…has a darkbeauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque.” He goes on to explain, “War gives us a distorted sense of self. It gives us meaning. It creates a feeling of comradeship that obliterates our alienation and makes us feel, for perhaps the first time in our lives, that we belong.” Of his own experience of war, living and working as a journalist in the war zones of Central America, the Balkans and the Middle East, he writes: “I have seen too much of violent death. I have tasted too much of my own fear. I have painful memories that lie buried and untouched most of the time. It is never easy when they surface.” It is, possibly, his sensitivity to his own experiences with war that led him to whatsome contend is his most courageous work to date: his 2008 book Collateral Damage for which he interviewed combat veterans from the Iraq war. This book represents the largest number of named eyewitnesses within the US Military who have testified on therecord about atrocities carried out by American soldiers and marines during the military occupation of Iraq. His book reveals in heartbreaking detail the devastating moral and physical consequences of the occupation.
Hedges has also published the following books: What Every Person Should Know About War (2003), Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America(2005), American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2008), I Don’t Believe inAtheists (2008). and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
Triumph of Spectacle ( 2009)
Hedges now writes a weekly column for Truthdig.com and is married to Eunice Wong, an actor. Together they have one child, Konrad,and he has two children Noelle and Thomas from a previous marriage. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
My father was a Presbyterian minister in a small farming community in upstate New York. He was an early and vocal supporter of the civil rights movement at a time when Dr. Martin Luther King was, in rural white enclaves like ours, one of the most hated men in America. He opposed, although a veteran of World War II, the Vietnam War and told me when I was about 12 that if the war was still being fought when I was 18 and I was drafted he would go to jail with me. To this day I have an image of sitting in a jail cell with my Dad. Finally, he was a public supporter of the gay rights movement calling for the marriage and ordination of gays. His youngest brother, my uncle, was gay and my father had a particular sensitivity to the pain of being a gay man in America in the 1950s and 1960s. When I attended Colgate University there was go gay and lesbian organization. My father, who by that time had a church in Syracuse, brought gay speakers to the campus. This led, after several meetings, to students confiding in my Dad that they were uncomfortable coming out of the closet to form a gay and lesbian alliance. This was a problem my Dad solved by driving down one day, taking me to lunch and telling me, although I was not gay, that I had to found it. So I founded the gay and lesbian alliance at the university, although I never attended. When I would walk into the dining hall for meals the checker would take my card, check off the appropriate box and hand it back to me saying “faggot.” I made it my undergraduate mission to seduce his girlfriend.
I have always sought to meet the moral and ethical standards my father set. He remains an invisible witness to every action I undertake. Seven years after he had died in 2002 I was called into the office of The New York Times. I had been speaking openly against the Iraq war and the paper issued me a written reprimand telling me that if I did not cease speaking out against the war I would be fired. It was not an easy moment. I had spent nearly fifteen years at the paper, including time as the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief. I faced a choice. I could comply with the paper’s demand and pay fealty to my career, but to do so would mean betraying my Dad. This betrayal was something I could not do. As I left the building, knowing my time at the paper was finished, I realized that the greatest gift my father had given me was freedom.
