[Peace-discuss] Zinn's response on Bush's press conference.

[Morton K.Brussel]

Published on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 by Newsday / Long Island, New 
York

Check the Facts Before Rushing to War

by Howard Zinn

After a year of fighting in Iraq and an occupation fraught with 
violence, surely it is not rash to suggest, given the debacle over 
missing "weapons of mass destruction," that it is a good general rule 
to treat any official rationale for war with skepticism.

  This conduct would be a healthy departure from the tendency of both 
Congress and the major media to assume, as was clearly done on the eve 
of this war in Iraq, that the government is telling the truth. And such 
skepticism would certainly be a prudent approach to any supposed candor 
coming from presidential press conferences, such as last night's, 
during an election campaign.

  If one human being on trial can only be given a death sentence on the 
basis of certainty beyond "a reasonable doubt," then surely this 
criterion should be applied where the lives of thousands are at stake. 
The decision to go to war in Iraq should have been challenged on two 
grounds.

  First, that the fearsome weapons claimed to be in Iraq's possession 
had not been found despite months of inspection by a United Nations 
team given unrestricted access throughout that country. Second, common 
sense suggested that a nation with 25 million people, devastated by two 
wars and 10 years of economic sanctions, without a single nuclear 
weapon, surrounded by enemies far better armed, could not be an 
imminent threat to the most powerful military machine in history.

  Not only did the president deceive the public, and take the country 
into war with a rationale that defied common sense, but Congress and 
the media, by going along, became accessories to that deception.

  A bit of history might have suggested skepticism. It might have been 
recalled that President James Polk took us into war with Mexico in 
1846, and William McKinley took us into war with Spain in 1898, and 
Congress authorized war in Vietnam in 1964, all based on deceptions.

  Another suggested principle: When a calamity occurs - such as the 
killing of soldiers on the Mexican border, or the sinking of the 
battleship Maine, or the blowing up of the Twin Towers, should 
Congress, the media and the public not be wary that the calamity might 
be made an excuse for going to war, with the real reasons concealed 
from the country?

  Should we not, after the terrible events of Sept. 11, have acted more 
intelligently, in a more focused way, against terrorism, seeking 
fundamental causes, rather than striking out blindly at whatever seemed 
easy targets - Afghanistan, Iraq? Should we not have considered whether 
military action might not inflame terrorism rather than diminish it?

  When the evidence for war is shaky, should we not ask: What is the 
real reason for military intervention?

  History might be useful here. Is it too embarrassing to suggest that 
oil is the real reason for virtually anything the United States has 
done in the Middle East? The real reason for war with Mexico was to 
take almost half of its territory. The real reason for war in Cuba was 
to replace Spanish control of that island with U.S. control. The real 
reason for war in the Philippines was the markets of China. The real 
reason for the Vietnam War was to take another piece of real estate in 
the Cold War game of Monopoly with the Soviet Union.

  Another general principle, buttressed by history: Military 
interventions and occupations do not lead to democracy. I would cite 
the long occupations of the Philippines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic. 
Also: the military action in Vietnam on behalf of a corrupt and 
dictatorial government, and the many covert actions - Iran, Guatemala, 
Chile - leading to brutal dictatorships.

  More conclusions, from both history and our experience in Iraq: that 
all wars have unintended consequences, usually bad ones; that military 
occupation is corrupting to the occupied country and also to the 
occupiers; that the casualties of a military adventure are not just the 
immediate ones, but continue far beyond. Think of the tens of thousands 
of suicides of Vietnam veterans, the 160,000 medical casualties of the 
Persian Gulf War.

  A final lesson from past and present: The American public cannot 
depend on our much overrated system of "checks and balances" to prevent 
a needless and costly war. Congress and the Supreme Court have proved 
to be no check for an executive branch hell-bent on combat. Only an 
aroused citizenry can provide the check on unbridled power that a 
democracy requires.

  Howard Zinn is professor emeritus at Boston University and author of 
"The People's History of the United States."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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