Howard Zinn(*)
The war
against
Public opinion polls now show the country decisively against the war
and the
Bush administration. The harsh realities have become visible. The
troops will
have to come home.
And while we work with increased determination to make this happen,
should we
not think beyond this war? Should we begin to think, even before this
shameful
war is over, about ending our addiction to massive violence, and using
the
enormous wealth of our country for human needs? That is, should we
begin to
speak about ending war - not just this war or that war - but war
itself? Perhaps
the time has come to bring an end to war, and turn the human race onto
a path
of health and healing.
A group of internationally known figures, celebrated both for their
talent and
their dedication to human rights - Gino Strada,
Paul
Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gordimer,
Eduardo Galeano and others - will soon
launch a world-wide campaign
to enlist tens of millions of people in a movement for the renunciation
of war,
hoping to reach the point where governments, facing popular resistance,
will
find it difficult or impossible to wage war. It may be an idea whose
time has
come.
There is a persistent argument against such a possibility, which I have
heard
from people on all parts of the political spectrum: we will never do
away with
war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling counter
to that
claim is in history: we don't find people spontaneously rushing to make
war on
others. What we find instead is that governments must make the most
strenuous
efforts to mobilize populations for war. They must entice soldiers with
promises of money, education, must hold out to young people whose
chances in
life look very poor that here is an opportunity to attain respect and
status.
And if those enticements don't work, governments must use coercion -
they must
conscript young people, force them into military service,
threaten them with prison if they do not comply.
Furthermore, the government must persuade young people and their
families that
though the soldier may die, though he or she may lose arms or legs, or
become
blind, that it is all for a noble cause, for God, for country. When you
look at
the endless series of wars of this century you do not find a public
demanding
war, but rather resisting it, until they are bombarded with
exhortations that
appeal, not to a killer instinct, but to a desire to do good, to spread
democracy or liberty or overthrow a tyrant.
Woodrow Wilson found a citizenry so reluctant to enter the
slaughterhouse of
the first World War that in his
presidential campaign
of 1916 he promised to stay out: "There is such a thing as a nation
being
too proud to fight." But after he was elected, he asked for, and
received
from Congress a declaration of war. The onslaught of patriotic slogans
began,
laws were passed to imprison dissenters, and the
In the second World War, there was indeed a
strong
moral imperative which still resonates among most people in this
country and
which maintains the reputation of World War II as "the good war".
There was a need to defeat the monstrosity of Fascism. It was that
belief that
drove me to enlist in the Air Force and fly bombing missions over
Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral
crusade.
Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard
no
screams, seen no children dismembered, But
now I had
to think about
I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other
warriors: once
we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other
side
was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we
did not
have to think any more. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it
was all
right.
I began to think about the motives of the Western powers and Stalinist
Russia
and wondered if they cared as much about Fascism as about retaining
their own
empires, their own power, and if that was why they had military
priorities
higher than bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. Of the six
million
Jews killed in the death camps (allowed to be killed?) 60,000 were
saved by the
war - one percent. A gunner on another crew, a reader of history with
whom I
had become friends, had said to me one day: "You know this is an
imperialist war. The Fascists are evil. But our side is not much
better."
I could not accept his statement at the time, but it stuck with me.
War, I decided, creates, insidiously, a common morality for all sides.
. It
poisons everyone who is engaged in it, however different they are in
many ways,
turns them into killers and torturers, as we are seeing now. It
pretends to be
concerned with toppling tyrants, and may in fact do so, but the people
it kills
are the victims of the tyrants. It appears to cleanse the world of
evil, but
that does not last, because its very nature spawns more evil. War, like
violence in general, I concluded, is a drug. It gives a quick high, the
thrill
of victory, but that wears off and then comes despair.
Whatever can be said about World War II, understanding its complexity,
the
situations that followed -
I would argue that the end of the Vietnam war
enabled
the people of the
The war in
We may be on the verge of a world-wide understanding, that war, defined
as the
indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people (acknowledging the
possibility
of humanitarian intervention to prevent atrocities) can no longer be
accepted,
for whatever reason, because the technology of war has reached the
point where
inevitably, 90% of its victims are civilians, and many of those are
children,
so that any war, whatever words are used to justify it, is a war
against
children.
The government of the United States, indeed governments everywhere, are
becoming exposed as untrustworthy, that is, not to be entrusted with
the safety
of human beings, or the safety of the planet, or the guarding of its
air, its
water, its natural wealth, or the curing of the poverty, the sickness,
the
alarming growth of natural disasters that plague so many of the six
billion
people on earth.
True, it is the governments that have the power, that monopolize the
wealth,
that control the information. But this power, overwhelming as it can
be, is
also fragile. It depends on the subservience, the obedience of the
people. When
that obedience is withdrawn the most powerful entities, armed
governments,
wealthy corporations, cannot carry on their wars or their business.
Strikes,
boycotts, non-cooperation can make the most arrogant of institutions
helpless.
The most powerful government on earth, the
I have quoted Einstein, who, reacting to attempts to "humanize" the
rules of war, said: "War cannot be humanized, it can only be
abolished."
Powerful truths must be reiterated, until they fasten ineradicably in
our
minds, until the words spread to others, until they become a mantra
repeated
all over the world, until the sound of those words become deafening,
until they
finally drown out the noise of guns, rockets, planes.
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