Continuing from this morning…
One of the points Tony Judt makes in this New York Review of Books essay is that one reason the U.S. so frequently finds itself forgetting the horrors of war is because we’ve never been conquered, occupied, or suffered mass civilian casualties the way European nations have. We don’t understand the cost of war.
Henry Moore did. This is Moore’s 1953-54 Warrior with Shield. I love these Moore Warrior sculptures of figures with shields; I think they’re the most human, most affecting work in his oeuvre.
The cost of war is all too apparent here. There are the limbs or lack thereof. That’s awfully hard to miss. But my eyes go right to the warrior’s ribcage. He’s plainly hungry. War has robbed him of nourishment. (I’m certainly not a military historian, but Europe’s two world wars decimated agricultural land. And the Soviet influence in eastern Europe had an awful impact on agriculture, especially in Germany.)
The cost of the Iraqi war has largely been hidden from Americans — in more ways than one. In terms of tax dollars, the war has cost $515 billion. Economists estimate that the total cost of the war to the U.S. will end up north of $1.5 trillion.
Related: ‘Mission accomplished’ and the lessons of history. Goya. Manet.
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