Talk Nation Radio: War Stories

The late Eduardo Galeano’s forthcoming book, Hunter of Stories, has five or ten sentences on each page — each page a tiny story, their combination engaging and powerful. Galeano includes the story of a war resister who chose to die rather than kill, and that of an Iraqi who foretold and pre-grieved the 2003 looting of the National Museum, also the story of former drone pilot Brandon Bryant who quit after killing a child and being lied to that the child had been a dog, not to mention the story of the World War I Christmas truces. These are all true stories, some new and some familiar, all well documented elsewhere, but Galeano doesn’t bother with the documentation here. He simply tells the stories — extremely simply, he tells the stories. He inspires me to offer the following, and to search for more. If you have ideas for the very best incidents to recount that fit into the following pattern, please let me know. The stories here are meant, not to depict every aspect of war or peace, much less to cover the entire history of war and peace. There’s no need to send me the full list of thousands and millions of stories not included here. The stories below are meant to encourage questioning of war-thinking. Send me the best anecdotes that further that project please. http://worldbeyondwar.org/warstories