A Good War is Hard to Find

Over the weekend I finished David Griffith’s A Good War is Hard to Find , a non-fiction book - an extended essay, really - on the peculiarly paradoxical moral sensibilities we Americans have come to cultivate toward violence. The point of departure for the book, its key moral dilemma, is framed by the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib; its moral compass, however, is set by the work of Flannery O’Connor, whose stories and meditations on good and evil, with its Catholic roots and theological resonances Griffith finds a more congenial vehicle than modern mechanisms of state (law) and psychology for understanding how Abu Ghraib could have been possible.

Law and psychology identify and diagnose what Foucault once called ‘dangerous individuals’; in doing so, it absolves the collectivity of its responsibility for even *thinking* much less accepting culpability for the exacting of wanton cruelty. It is the individual who breaks the law, or who - for whatever reason - assumes an aberrant psychology, and thus does what was done at Abu Ghraib. Griffith, a Christian writer who assumes the profoundly Christian character of the American polity, finds this attitude deeply unsettling The ready claim that America places on the righteousness with which it wields the sword, without any accompanying hesitation or anxiety over the terrible violence it is capable of unleashing: this lack of moral doubt becomes all the more jarring when the images and photos from Abu Ghraib are so effectively explained away.

Griffith periodically succumbs to a familiar argument: that it is our pop culture that has inured us to violence, that has removed any shame that we may feel from the sight of people being humiliated, burned, tortured in our name. But his own experience indicates something more subtle, and difficult to diagnose, at work than this. One of the most riveting passages of the book recounts the events of a Halloween party, in which he poses as a guard from Abu Ghraib, giving the notorious ‘thumbs-up’ sign before another guest, hooded for the moment as an unfortunate prisoner while carrying a beer cup in one of his outstretched hands (Griffith includes the photo into the narrative, and the reaction becomes all the stronger when you realize that it’s not from Abu Ghraib, but from the party itself). How could someone so sophisticated in his sensibilities succumb to such moral indecency? Surely it is too lame an answer to blame it on Pulp Fiction, video games, or the stupidities and embarrassments of youth.

As Griffith’s reliance on O’Connor suggests: there are no easy replies, only paradoxes. The book is a marvel for the way in which it weaves together various literary genres - it’s at once a confessional, a travelogue, a diary, a series of reading reflections, a news photo library, and a piece of cultural criticism. It reminded me, in a way, of the magisterial ‘novels’ of W.G. Sebald, who also combined personal reflection, memory and recollection, fictionalized elements, photographs, and other images into narratives so seamlessly compelling as to create vast caverns of experience out of deceptively simple situations and events. Griffith, who’s in his early 30s (or so I’d guess), does not achieve those transcendent heights, but I think it’s an extraordinary accomplishment nevertheless.

Updated: After writing this - too quickly - I noticed this morning that I was referring to the author as ‘Griffiths’ rather than by his correct name, ‘Griffith.’ I’ve edited the post accordingly.