“When the Rich Wage War, It's the Poor Who Die”. This quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre's The Devil and the Good Lord was used by Linkin Park in their song Hands Held High. It was released about the time of the war in Iraq and intended, it seemed, to be an indictment of the Bush doctrine in the Middle East. Sartre's play, first published in 1960, predates the song by over forty-five years. It illustrates that little has changed in the power dynamics of waging war. Death comes in many forms: the sudden, horrific death associated with war; and the slow attrition of being ground down by economic adversity. This article takes a look at both and reflects on their connection.
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