Heckled in Rockford.

• Author: Hedges, Chris
• Position: Cover Story

Editor's note: Chris Hedges, the author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, "is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. This was the commencement speech he delivered at Rockford College on May 17 before a hostile crowd. We made this transcript from the transcript and audiotape on the Rockford Register Star's website, rrstar.com. Audience reaction is in brackets.

I want to speak to you today about war and empire. The killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill--theirs and ours--be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later, as our empire expands. And in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment, and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the goodwill, the empathy the world felt for us after 9/11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace. And we are now part of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure, and perhaps the rage, of much of the world--certainly the one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I will remind you are not Arab--is upon us. Look today at the fourteen people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage, in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day, will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life. ["No!"] And when we are attacked, we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury.

The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess--the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq--we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern Western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

The real injustices--the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East--will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed, we will swell their ranks. [Whistles.] Once you master people by force, you depend on force for control. In your isolation, you begin to make mistakes. ["Where were you on...