The Barbarization of Warfare

The images from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad have been a grim reminder of warfare's undiminished capacity for brutality and indiscriminate excess. What happened in Abu Ghraib has happened before: the World War II, and more recent wars and insurgencies in Algeria, Congo, Angola, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and many others, all bear witness to the ever-present human capacity to commit barbaric acts if circumstances allow.
What drives people to mistreat, humiliate, and torment others? In an age when real time war, violence, and torture are becoming addictive forms of entertainment, it is now more critical than ever to deepen our understanding of the extraordinary distortions of the human psyche and spirit that occur in wartime. Eight distinguished scholars explore, in this first collective effort, the effects of the barbarization of warfare on our cultures and societies.
Contributors: Joanna Bourke, Niall Ferguson, Jay Winter, Richard Overy, David Anderson, Hew Strachan, Paul Rogers, Kathleen Taylor, Marilyn Young, Paul Rogers, Anthony Dworkin, Amir Weiner, Mary Habeck, and David Simpson.

Author: George Kassimeris
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 09/01/2006
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 8.46h x 5.48w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780814747971

About the Author
Kassimeris, George: - George Kassimeris is a Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Terrorism at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of Europe's Last Red Terrorists (NYU Press) the first book in any language on Greece's notorious November 17th terrorist group. He writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune and is now working on a biography of Andreas Papandreou.