Name:

Steve Fried

Answer:

Yes, inescapable and irrevocable too, sad to say.

Doris Lessing says it best for me in her 1985 Massey Lecture Series talks, titled Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, when in the first lecture "When in the Future They Look Back on Us," she points out a fundamental fallacy of assumption:

"I think it is sentimental to discuss the subject of war, or peace, without acknowledging that a great many people enjoy war -- not only the idea of it, but the fighting itself. In my time I have sat through many many hours spent listening to people talking about war, the prevention of war, the awfulness of war, with it never once being mentioned that for large numbers of people the idea of war is exciting, and that when a war is over they may say it was the best time in their lives. This may be true even of people whose experiences in war were terrible, and which ruined their lives. People who have lived through a war know that as it approaches, and at first secret, unacknowledged, elation begins, as if an almost inaudible drum is beating ... an awful, illicit, violent excitement is abroad. Then the elation becomes too strong to be ignored or overlooked: then everyone is possessed by it."

Along with work by Marianne Moore and Mohandas Gandhi, Lessing's quote is the basis for my 7-minute documentary film, "Warinward," linked below.

But maybe Cormac McCarthy says it worst but truest when, in his novel Blood Meridian, his violent mouthpiece the Judge asserts with evangelical enthusiasm: "War is but a forcing of the unity of existence. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant, and here are the views of the litigants despised."

Video: Unable to find video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feS485X5PFw&context=C3dd0254ADOEgsToPDskLs83q79cqSAZVVRaicJyZS.