[Peace-discuss] The necessity of history

[Brussel, Morton K]

Carl,

You should explicitly acknowledge David Swanson for his piece, much of which you quote here.
Swanson has become one of the most active and compelling of anti-war commentators, admirably emulating what Zinn advocated.
Thanks for the link.

--mkb

On Nov 25, 2012, at 9:54 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>From the late Howard Zinn <http://warisacrime.org/content/howard-zinns-echoes>:

...We like to think of war as a necessary tool of last resort, as demonstrated by our list of "good wars" which generally includes the U.S. war of independence, the U.S. civil war, and the second world war (debunked by Zinn as 'The Three Holy Wars') ... "The abolition of war," he says, "is of course an enormous undertaking.  But keep in mind that we in the antiwar movement have a powerful ally.  Our ally is a truth which even governments addicted to war, profiting from war, must one of these days recognize: that wars are not practical ways of achieving their ends.  More and more, in recent history, the most powerful nations find themselves unable to conquer much weaker nations."

...Zinn criticized Kennedy for his actions and inactions in 1961 and again in 1963 when the Senate had the opportunity,  as it always does, at the beginning of each new session, to change its own rules and do away with the filibuster.  Kennedy, Zinn had concluded, wanted to allow the racists to filibuster against civil rights.  Echoes of Zinn should be amplified between now and January loudly enough for current senators, and the current president, to hear.

In May of 1971, Zinn said, "It's been a long time since we impeached a president.  And it's time, time to impeach a president, and the vice president, and everybody else sitting in high office who carries on this war."  In 2003, Zinn said, "There are people around the country calling for Bush's impeachment.  Some people think this is a daring thing to say.  No, it's in the Constitution.  It provides for impeachment. . . . Congress was willing to impeach Nixon for breaking into a building, but they're not willing to impeach Bush for breaking into a country."

"It is true," Zinn says of our endless and perhaps permanent elections hang-up, "that Americans have been voting every few years for Congressmen and presidents.  But it is also true that the most important social changes in the history of the United States -- independence from England, Black emancipation, the organization of labor, gains in sexual equality, the outlawing of racial segregation, the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam -- have come about not through the ballot box but through the direct action of social struggle, through the organization of popular movements using a variety of extralegal and illegal tactics..."

Later (years later) Zinn says, without self-pity: "So if we don't have a press that informs us, we don't have an opposition party to help us, we are left on our own, which actually is a good thing to know.  It's a good thing to know we're on our own.  It's a good thing to know that you can't depend on people who are not dependable.  But if you're on your own, it means you must learn some history, because without history you are lost.  Without history, anybody in authority can get up before a microphone and say, 'We've got to go into this country for that reason and for this reason, for liberty, for democracy, the threat.'  Anybody can get up before a microphone and tell you anything.  And if you have no history, you have no way of checking up on that."

But if you do have history, Zinn says, then you gain the additional advantage of recognizing that "these concentrations of power, at certain points they fall apart.  Suddenly, surprisingly.  And you find that ultimately they're very fragile.  And you find that governments that have said 'we will never do this' end up doing it.  'We will never cut and run.'  They said this in Vietnam.  We cut and ran in Vietnam.  In the South, George Wallace, the racist governor of Alabama: 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.'  Enormous applause.  Two years later, Blacks in Alabama had in the meantime begun to vote and Wallace was going around trying to get Black people to vote for him.  The South said never, and things changed."
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