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Hell no, we shouldn’t go Radical historian Howard Zinn looks at American wars and protest movements past and present by KEN HECHTMAN Howard Zinn is America’s foremost revisionist-radical historian and a veteran of half-a-century’s worth of civil rights and anti-war movements. A People’s History of the United States, the best known of his 14 books, and the only one to be featured in an episode of the Sopranos, has been described as a touchstone of dissident thought by those who like it and switching the white hats with the black hats by those who don’t. In it, he quotes Indians on Columbus, slaves on slavery, labour unions on industrial development and pacifists on war. Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, is currently focused on opposing the upcoming invasion of Iraq and he’ll be in Montreal this week to talk about, in his words, war, history and war and history. Mirror: In the introduction to A People’s History of the United States, you use the example of Columbus to show that the problem with Official History isn’t that it denies that atrocities happened. The problem, you say, is far more insidious, that events like slavery or exterminating the Indians get justified as a small price to pay for progress. What problems get caused by telling the story that way? Howard Zinn: That has been with us for a long time. How many times terrible things are justified in the name of progress, the excuse given, for example, by Madeleine Albright— M: You’re way ahead of me. That was my next question— HZ: The real reason for going into Iraq was oil. The stated reasons were different. What I was referring to at the time of Columbus was that human beings were sacrificed in the name of progress and civilization. And it’s still going on. If we go into Iraq, we presumably will be willing to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis in the name of bringing democracy to Iraq. M: In the aftermath of Gulf War I, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, dismissed half-a-million Iraqi civilian deaths from bombing and sanctions. She said, “It’s a hard choice, but we think it’s worth it.” You use another phrase in People’s History: “the anger of the sacrificed.” When the bodies of Gulf War II are counted and we’re assured that they were a small price to pay, can you imagine there might be some people in the world who don’t see it that way? Who might be smart and patient and ruthless enough to do something about it? HZ: You mean terrorism? I can see the terrorists using the suffering of the Iraqi people as a pretext for further attacks. The problem with responding in that way is that the American retaliation will only add to the suffering of the people on whose behalf the terrorists claim to be acting. And the cycle will go on… Selective responsibility M: Now given that Saddam Hussein actually is as bad as everyone says, and the horror stories really are true, does the American government have any responsibility— HZ: It doesn’t have any responsibility to make war to get rid of somebody who tyrannizes his own people. If that were our responsibility, we’d be making war all over the planet because there are tyrants all over the planet. The government of Burma has treated its people as badly as Saddam Hussein, the government of North Korea has mistreated its people. What do we do about it? We certainly don’t make war. War will certainly kill an awful lot of people with the end being uncertain. We trust the Iraqi people to overthrow the tyrant on their own as so many tyrants in the world have been overthrown by their own people. M: Another theme from People’s History is that radical history can’t always be all about relentless gloom and doom, blame and fingerpointing. It also has to be about showing possibilities, to use your phrase. What kind of possibilities are you talking about? Why is it important to remember the brief, shining moments? HZ: If you only show the terrible things that happen in history—there are plenty to show—it will leave people passive, hopeless and resigned to whatever calamities that are going to befall them. But it’s important to look at history and find those instances where people have resisted tyranny and overcome injustice—and there are many, many such instances. It’s important to point them out because only that can give people strength for action in the present, give them the suggestion that it is possible—not inevitable, but possible—to bring about change. In the case of the United States, we got rid of slavery and won the eight-hour day and changed the conditions of working people in this country to some extent. Of course, more recently we had the civil rights movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam, and those are very inspiring stories. The spirit of the Sixties M: What are the stories from the Vietnam anti-war movement that you would want to bring to the attention of the anti-war movement of today? HZ: I would point out that the anti-war movement started out very small and it looked hopeless. It started with scattered groups of people protesting against the war in 1964, but the movement grew. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, two-thirds of the nation was in favour of the war and four or five years later, two-thirds of the nation was opposed to the war. In other words, people’s minds changed. People learned more, people got more information. The calamities we were inflicting on the Vietnamese became visible and human. People saw the pictures of the Marines burning huts and the My Lai massacre, they heard about napalm and Agent Orange and so on. People learned and people changed their minds. M: We’re in the awkward position now of an anti-war movement that predates the war. We’re standing on our notional soapboxes and trying to warn people, “This is what’s going to happen.” Would you care to speculate how it might be different if instead we could say, “This is what’s going to happen—again,” and know that our audiences had the background to understand what we’re talking about? HZ: Oh, it would make a big difference if people had some history. We could remind them of the history of government lies and deception during the Vietnam War so they don’t simply take as fact the things they get from [White House spokesman Ari] Fleischer and [U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld. The history of the Vietnam War would suggest that they should look behind the stated motives for going into war and ask, “What are the real motives?” For instance, to give people the history of Kennedy and Johnson’s decisions on going into Vietnam. Very few Americans know that the tapes of Johnson and Kennedy’s conversations indicate that they were making decisions affecting the lives of thousands of people in Vietnam based on their presidential ambitions. Johnson was deciding whether to get out of Vietnam based on whether he was going to be impeached or not. Kennedy was deciding whether to withdraw troops on the basis of how it would effect the 1964 election. Before the first Gulf War, Bush’s aide [John] Sununu was telling the press that Bush needed something to happen in foreign policy to recoup his low approval ratings. Tools of war a target also M: During the anti-war movement of the 1960s, one of your ideas was to extend the scope of campus campaigns beyond just the military presence in the university. Weapons manufacturers recruiting on campus and Pentagon research contracts also became legitimate targets. What was the logic behind that campaign? Do you recommend the same approach today? HZ: The logic there was that wars are connected with money. There was a great poster produced by the anti-war movement that said, “War is good for business. Invest your son.” What a stunning thought! Well, war is good for business and the connections between corporate profit and war are very clear and very strong. I’d point to the Dow Chemical company, manufacturer of napalm, I’d point to Honeywell, manufacturer of cluster bombs, and demonstrations that took place against those companies, which I think were very educational for the American public. M: One beef I do have with radical history is that it often forces everything it touches into the same underclass versus overclass mould. I remember an earnest young anti-trade protester who wanted to know if Osama bin Laden was on his side or the corporations’. It’s funny, but the kid has that blind spot because the writers who explained the world to him have the same blind spot—and that’s not so funny. HZ: That can happen, of course, and it does happen. That kind of simplified history is not only not true, it’s not persuasive. While I think it’s important to show that in the United States we do have a class society—something that’s totally missed in our educational system, something that is constantly denied—it’s important to point out that class is central in American history without simplifying it into one size fits all.
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