Howard Zinn: War cannot be accepted no matter what. No matter what.

[Karmadillo]

http://www.zmag.org/zvideo/3322

<edit>

Warfare today is a very antiseptic thing. People blithely - they send some Predator missiles without any pilots at all, right? That's easy. We'll just kill people and we won't even take any chances of having anybody shot down.

Three months before Nagasaki, we sent planes over Tokyo to fire bomb Tokyo, and 100,000 people were killed in one night in the bombing of Tokyo.

Later, when I visited Japan and I talked to people there, and later when I visited Hiroshima and met with people who were survivors of Hiroshima - and you should have seen them: people without legs and arms and blind and so on. When I could actually see what that meant, that war, the fifty million dead in the war. You can say, well, we defeated fascism. Well, did we? Did we really?

That's another thing with the Revolutionary War. Well, not everything turned out so well after the Revolutionary War. Not everything turned out really that great and surely not the war in that many people killed.

And what about World War II with fifty million dead? Sure, you got rid of Hitler. You got rid of the Japanese military machine and you got rid of Mussolini. But did you get rid of fascism in the world? Did you get rid of militarism? Did you get rid of racism? Did you get rid of war? We've had war after war after war. What did those fifty million people die for?

We have to rethink this question of war.

You have to come to the conclusion as I have. War cannot be accepted no matter what. No matter what. No matter the reasons given: liberty, democracy, this, that. War by its definition is the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends which are uncertain. When you think about means and ends, you think about that ethical proposition and apply it to war. The means are horrible certainly. The end is uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.

more...

[ixion]

1. Exactly. No matter what.

k/r :applause:

[NJmaverick]

3. See post #2

[Nikki Stone1]

47. Zinn's statement is not strong enough: War has ENABLED facism, theft of natural resources,

and the wholesale destruction of people and their environments.

[NJmaverick]

2. Howard should have visited the graves of millions of Chinese

butchered and slaughtered by imperial Japan or visited with the millions of woman raped by the Japanse forces. Maybe he should have talked to the survivors (the rare few) of cruel and inhuman experiments performed by the Japanese on Chinese and US prisoners.

Howard blinded himself to the big picture by deliberately looking at one thing. Poor choice on his part.

[ixion]

8. funny how every other country's war crimes are so atrocious, but ours

seem almost non-existent by your reckoning. What's up with that?

I don't support war crimes by ANY country. I don't make an exception for the US.

[NJmaverick]

11. Are you suggesting our troops are raping scores of Afghan women

with the blessing of the government? Are you suggesting our scientists are performing government sponsored experiments on live human beings and doing live autopsies? Are you suggesting our troops are deliberately targeting civilians?

The better question is what is up with your ridiculous accusations?

[winyanstaz]

48. Our troops and british troops did rape iraq women...

We did torture innocents and yes we have targeted civilians....right now in Afganistan we are blowing up innocents with unmanned drones....
War is evil and wrong.

[ixion]

49. The US has a long history of such things

and yet you deny it.

[galileoreloaded]

17. Totally agree. These old-time ideas and actors have GOT to go..

in this new age of political and social understanding, huh bud. Yep, lets just shuffle those peaceniks to the door, and go get us some pal!!!

You first....Lock and Load!!!

[NJmaverick]

20. The old time ideas saved countless lives of Chinese, Jews, Homosexuals

and many others. You may not like those old time ideas, but you are foolish to ignore them.

[stray cat]

4. Why did we ever try to stop Hitler? And France should of course be gone

and I fully support the Japanese empire - after all they treated the Chinese so well....

:sarcasm:

[NJmaverick]

5. What about the Jews Hilter was killing?

[stray cat]

6. I guess we should of let them die along with the mentally ill and homosexuals

in the name of keeping peace :sarcasm: After all - peace is good.

[raccoon]

12. You do realize that the persecution of the Jews wasn't the reason

the US entered the war against Germany, right?

You may know that already, but I'm afraid the media conveys the impression that the reason the US was at war with Germany was to liberate the Jews.

[anonymous171]

14. WWII was a war of self-defense.

And wars of self-defense are always just.

[NJmaverick]

15. That wasn't the reason, Hitler declared war on the United States

still if you going to try and make the extreme claim that war is always bad and never produces anything good, one has to look hard at the FACT that the war stopped these awful killings.

[M155Y_A1CH]

25. There was no push to end the death camps during the war

Sec. Treas. Morganthau was pilloried over his plan for reparations because he was Jewish and folks did not want that to be a factor in the war or the peace. We didn't wish to be seen as anti or pro Jew. It was German military conquest that we had an issue with. It was assumed that our winning of the war would end the deportations and deaths. It was decided that it was best to do nothing about the camps because the rail lines could be easily and quickly rebuilt and if we bombed the camps, Goebbels would tell the world that we were on Germany's side on the "Jewish issue" and had helped to destroy them by killing a whole camp full. We also were in the Arab appeasement mode even then.

[Astrad]

66. The Holocaust essentially succeeded

Hitler's goal with the Final Solution was to exterminate all the Jews of Europe (and others) and he basically achieved that. The end of WW2 came too late for almost all of the people targeted by the Nazi's genocidal policies.

[zipplewrath]

19. Isolation

Discussing WWII as if it somehow occurred in isolation is wrong.

WWII and Hitler were born of WWI, and the actions after that war was over. France and the west created Hitler. Any "reasonable" peace like Wilson was searching for would have prevented Hitler's rise to power. The west sent Lenin to Russia as part of a WW I victory strategy to foment unrest in Russia. Ho Chi Minh worked the with OSS.

Japan's militarism was enabled (but not created) by external forces which helped them gain favor and support within Japan.

We trained and radicalized Osama Bin Laden. We installed the Shah of Iran which lead directly to the rise of the Ayatollah Komenei and the Islamic revolution. The west created Israel out of an existing country, by force of war.

You can't discuss most wars as if they "just happened". Virtually all of our wars can be traced to our own actions prior to them. War isn't the "solution" to anything. It is generally the initial cause of the next one.

We shouldn't so much be PREPARED to go to war as we should be AFRAID to go to war.

[closeupready]

30. Also note that Hitler gave orders to blow up the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre,

and much of what we see and love when we travel to Paris. That's what his infamous, "Is Paris burning?" was reference to - he was asking his occupying general if he had detonated the explosives yet?

[anonymous171]

7. And this is why I don't like Zinn.

Although I can't really blame him for being like this. I would feel guilty about war too if I had napalmed a bunch of people for no reason back in WWII.

[ShortnFiery]

39. That's OK there are Millions of others who respect his wisdom. He won't miss you.

:evilgrin:

[zipplewrath]

9. Last resort

War is what you do after all your moral options have passed you by.

War is not only suppose to be a last resort, but it is also suppose to be something you avoid. The American Revolution could have been avoided, except that both sides chose to use violence to attempt to achieve their own ends. The Civil war may have been the toughest to avoid only in the sense that we would have been forced to choose between using violence to end slavery or using violence to continue to enforce it. The problem is, that people continue to CHOOSE war over the other options, at least on one "side" or another. And, as Mr. Zinn points out, once they start, the people then choose to extend the purpose of the wars, which then extends the violence.

Folks rightfully accuse the Shrub of lying. His biggest lie is the easiest to prove. It was not a "last resort".

[closeupready]

32. Yes, this is not a sarcastic remark, but people can always surrender, at any point.

Someone with big guns pointed at someone else can get their way if their victim concedes to their demands. But if in doing so, both sides know that the aggressor is going to kill countless thousands in taking over and cleansing ethnically, then war is almost mandatory.

[zipplewrath]

45. Big guns don't just materialize

I understand your point, that's sorta the lesson behind the statement about "...when all the moral choices have passed you by". We all have options well before the guy with the big guns shows up. The reality is that the more I study the history prior to wars, one finds that most of the key players knew they were headed towards war, but chose to keep moving that way anyway (on both sides).

[LoZoccolo]

10. This is a typical "progressive" shirking of the responsibility to make tough decisions......

...which affect other people's lives in order to keep onesself artificially "pure". Look and you'll see this pattern repeated over and over. People don't want to be a part of a solution to a problem that solves some evil rather than all, but they can somehow feel in their minds that taking no action at all, and letting the problem continue completely, is OK.

[EFerrari]

13. You obviously know zip about Howard Zinn who spent his life

getting his hands dirty on behalf of other people. The ignorance is staggering, really.

[LoZoccolo]

16. He is basically saying that war hasn't completely stopped fascism, etcetera, so we shouldn't do it.

Is that not his argument?

It doesn't matter what he's done; I'm not really attacking him, but his yielding to this classic psychological trait of certain left-wing activists.

[EFerrari]

21. It doesn't matter what he's done? Didn't you just call him a shirker?

It's your failure, not his, of imagination that resorts to simply vilifying this much accomplished, dedicated man instead of thinking about what he's saying.

[LoZoccolo]

26. No. For the second time, I am not attacking him, but his stupid argument.

You are trying to argue from authority, a logical fallacy. Even if what you say is true, you are at best exposing him as a hypocrite for doing one thing and then saying another.

[EFerrari]

51. Yes, you did attack him as ignorantly as possible.

The you used a broad brush to smear all progressives with your straw man.

And I didn't claim authority for Zinn, thanks. I claimed and you can use your Google to find out, that Howard Zinn is no ivory tower purist.

As to your egregious charge of hypocrisy, that doesn't even deserve a response.

[LoZoccolo]

54. I leave my argument for the benefit and enjoyment of the sane and reasonable.

I am finished arguing with you. Unless you can point out with a quote where I attack Zinn at all, aside, of course, from his making this stupid argument.

[Greyhound]

33. "My mind is made up, don't need no facts." n/t

Nationalism is powerful, whatcha gonna do?
:shrug:

[MicaelS]

38. Exactly...

Zinn is obviously still guilt ridden over the actions he took during WWII, and trying to pawn off his guilt trip on others. Sorry, I refuse his attempt to lay his burden of guilt on me or the US. I watched his Holy Wars video and was disgusted by the statements he made a toward the end.. Zinn reminds me of the Jewish scientists who fled Hitler and then came to work on the Manhattan Project. They were perfectly willing to use the bomb against a bunch of filthy Fascists, but the instant the Nazis were defeated, THEN and only then they suddenly developed scruples.

If the bomb had been available a year sooner then Germany should have had her cities attacked. Hitler and his whole filthy leadership should have been immolated. Berlin should have been destroyed. The Holocaust stopped sooner and maybe a million or more people in the camps saved. I have always believed if that had happened the only thing we would hear from Progressives about the atomic bomb would be silence.

[ShortnFiery]

44. Way too simplistic. Why don't you follow Zinn = enlist and deploy? When you've gleaned all the

wisdom Howard Zinn has acquired, get back with us then? :evilgrin:

[MicaelS]

46. Because I'm too fat, and too old, that's why. n/t

[gratuitous]

18. And once you take war off the table

It's astonishing what sort of solutions suddenly present themselves, solutions that are obscured by the allure of blowing stuff up real good. The means of war are indeed a horrible certainty, and the outcome is not only uncertain, it's usually a chimera, unattainable by any means, and certainly not through the application of widespread indiscriminate violence.

But oh, how we in the United States especially love war so. A lot of fun is poked at people of faith at DU, with talk of invisible sky wizards and such. But you want to see real blind belief in something without any basis in fact or reality, you have to go to the believers in war. Oh, the promise of a bright, new war! We'll eradicate our enemies, bring peace and stability, stop the atrocities everyone else is committing, and praises will ring across the sky for our all-American fightin' men and women!

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. War by its definition is the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends which

are uncertain.

However - when somebody else starts the war, what do you do?

If we had not gone to war in WW2 they Nazi regime would have taken all of Europe and Russia and all the European colonies around the world. With all that, do you think they would have stopped there?

The reason the mis-begotten "domino theory" resonated so much during the cold war was because we saw, in Europe, one country after another fall to the Nazis, and in the Pacific once country after another fall to the Japanese imperialists. There were already 20-30 million killed before the US even joined in. The Final Solution was already at work before 12/7/41, and hundreds of thousands of Jew had been massacred - prototypes of the 'showers' were being used using carbon monoxide, and the massacre of Baba Yar took place months before we were dragged into the war - and it was the inefficiencies of those killings that led to the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Should we have stayed aloof of that?

[Taitertots]

23. One Word: Naive

It is based on the idea that malevolent people will leave us alone. History has shown this to be false.

Obviously war should be prevented.

We did the right thing by nuclear bombing the Japanese. We can all wax philosophic about hypothetical situations to end the war, but nuking them did end it. As profiteers from the horrors they inflicted upon the chinese, I think much more would have been justified.

Did we solve all the worlds problems with war? Were they supposed to?

[grantcart]

24. I have a few million Cambodians that will beg to differ

They still thank the Vietnamese for invading Cambodia and getting rid of the Khmer Rouge.

Even know quite a few pacificists who do the same.

If you think war is the worst cruelty that mankind has imagined then you really don't understand the reality of the world at all.

[AngryAmish]

29. THat is the exact example I was going to use

[cbdo2007]

27. I'm not sure he understands the difference between offensive and a defensive

war effort.

[ShortnFiery]

42. LOL, Howard Zinn does know that and much more. He's a world class and respected historian. eom

[cbdo2007]

52. That's not what he says in the OP above. He lumps agressors and defenders

in the same category together and apparently thinks neither side wishes the war wasn't happening.

[closeupready]

28. He is so wrong, hard to know where to begin. Senseless war? Yes, that is always wrong.

There are some wars that are just and necessary. WWII was one.

[ShortnFiery]

43. FEW to NONE ... only in self-defense. eom

[closeupready]

50. Actually, yes, I agree with 'few to none'.

n/t

[GreenMetalFlake]

31. k/r

[proteus_lives]

34. Zinn is asinine.

I wasn't impressed with People's History of the United States and the first time I read his comments about how we shouldn't have fought WWII, he lost me completely.

Zinn's version of dodo-like pacifism would kill as many people as war.

[anonymous171]

55. His worst article was that one he wrote last year where he said that we should not have fought the

American revolution.

[proteus_lives]

59. He's a dodo bird.

Doomed to extinction.

Good thing the rest of the human race has a little more sense.

[G_j]

35. Zinn fought with distinction in World War Two as a fighter pilot

he knows about war

[proteus_lives]

37. So did both my grandfathers.

One was a radioman on a carrier in the Pacific and the other won a Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge. Both were proud of being part of the effort to bring down the Nazi and Japanese war machines.

War is never a good thing but sometimes it's a necessary thing.

[ShortnFiery]

40. RARELY, and only in self-defense. We go to war at the drop of a hat to FEED our MIC ...

that is just plain vile. :puke:

[MicaelS]

41. He was NOT a fighter pilot he was a bombardier n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" John Lennon K&R

People are no more naturally inclined to war than they are to riding bicycles or eating marshmallows. Most of the world's population, throughout history, have never actively participated in, or been direct victims of war.

It is the "leaders" who make war and it is the people who become convinced that it's for their own good to wage them and kill other people who usually believe that war that war is "just", "necessary", or, "the only way".


“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[dionysus]

53. so when some other nation attacks you, what are you supposed to do?

[WildEyedLiberal]

56. Make a human chain in the streets and sign peace songs

That will appeal to the aggressors' better nature and they will stop as one, lay down their arms, and begin to weep.

... or something.

[Odin2005]

57. This is why Pacifism is moronic.

[Mithreal]

60. Which is more irritating? Oblivious American Empire stretching while the economy collapses

or pacifists?

War is the preferred tool of America, follow the money. Easy to knock pacificism when your family and friends are not being annihilated by the US machine.

Talk like a chickenhawk, just saying.

[dysfunctional press]

63. what is MOST irritating are people who think that there is no middle ground.

there are justifiable reasons for going to war.
but that's not to say that every war is justifiable.

[Mithreal]

64. True.

[avaistheone1]

62. I have seen a hell of lot more morons associated with war and the war machine

than I ever have with pacifism.

[Mithreal]

65. .

:applause:

[Generator]

58. The great irony is the disconnect

Wonder why we have no health care? WAR. Iraq. Afghanistan. Wonder why we have crumbling infrastructure, higher education that is unfordable and putting us BEHIND nations like China and India in educated future children, WAR.

Not to mention the thousands of our children dead to line the pockets of cartels and military contractors. But we say they are dying for us, for our freedom. Until we say that joining the military as it exists in 2010 America is to die for the wrong reasons, we will continue to let our children die for profit. But this can barely even be articulated on a site like DU, because nothing is more sacrosanct than the military myth.

We have LESS freedom because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have waterless wiretapping, we have the patriot act. So another myth-they are dying for our freedom. YES, I felt so much freer during the Bush years because that 19 year old from Alabama died for my freedom. It's a tragedy-and yes he died for me-but it didn't make me safer or more free. It's lies. Again we can barely say this on DU.


Eventually we will become like the former Soviet Union-all that money for a war that didn't need to exist and the holocaust that never came except day after day of the slow drip of war, and no money left for the country we were supposed to be.

[David Zephyr]

61. K&R.

.

[Gregorian]

67. Boycott war.

I did.

I'll never carry a gun. Not for purposes of war.