[Peace] Howard Zinn opines.

Mon Oct 6 14:45:40 CDT 2008

Below is the first part of an article published in The Progressive  
magazine. What is copied was also published in the Boston Globe. In  
view of the discussion held at a recent AWARE meeting concerning the  
election and Obama, I append at the end of the Globe segment (which  
castigates Obama for his stance on Afghanistan) what Zinn had to say  
about Obama and the election in The Progressive article.  --mkb

Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war
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By Howard Zinn

July 17, 2008
BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says  
to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more  
troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops  
from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan.

For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then  
has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders  
gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they  
not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of  
thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?

Did we "win" by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate,  
leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea  
and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people  
- mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on  
children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.

Did we "win" in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2  
million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving  
children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers  
dead.

Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam  
Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but  
perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the  
United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States  
to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of  
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set  
the stage for another war.

In Afghanistan, the United States declared "victory" over the  
Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The  
recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq.  
What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will  
produce "victory"? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how  
long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?

The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan is a good moment to reflect  
on the beginning of US involvement there. There should be sobering  
thoughts to those who say that attacking Iraq was wrong, but  
attacking Afghanistan was right.

Go back to Sept. 11, 2001. Hijackers direct jets into the World Trade  
Center and the Pentagon, killing close to 3,000 A terrorist act,  
inexcusable by any moral code. The nation is aroused. President Bush  
orders the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan, and the American  
public is swept into approval by a wave of fear and anger. Bush  
announces a "war on terror."

Except for terrorists, we are all against terror. So a war on terror  
sounded right. But there was a problem, which most Americans did not  
consider in the heat of the moment: President Bush, despite his  
confident bravado, had no idea how to make war against terror.

Yes, Al Qaeda - a relatively small but ruthless group of fanatics -  
was apparently responsible for the attacks. And, yes, there was  
evidence that Osama bin Laden and others were based in Afghanistan.  
But the United States did not know exactly where they were, so it  
invaded and bombed the whole country. That made many people feel  
righteous. "We had to do something," you heard people say.

Yes, we had to do something. But not thoughtlessly, not recklessly.  
Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious  
criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire  
neighborhood be bombed? There was soon a civilian death toll in  
Afghanistan of more than 3,000 - exceeding the number of deaths in  
the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of Afghans were driven from their  
homes and turned into wandering refugees.

Two months after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Boston Globe story  
described a 10-year-old in a hospital bed: "He lost his eyes and  
hands to the bomb that hit his house after Sunday dinner." The doctor  
attending him said: "The United States must be thinking he is Osama.  
If he is not Osama, then why would they do this?"

We should be asking the presidential candidates: Is our war in  
Afghanistan ending terrorism, or provoking it? And is not war itself  
terrorism?

Here is the addition from The Progressive:

One might assume from the above that I can see no difference between  
McCain and Obama, that I see them as equivalent. Not so. There is a  
difference, not a significant enough difference for me to have  
confidence in Obama as President, but just enough for me to vote for  
Obama and to hope he defeats McCain.
	Whoever is President, the crucial factor for change will be how much  
agitation there is in the country on behalf of change. I am guessing  
that Obama may be more sensitive than McCain to such turmoil, since  
it will come from his supporters, from the enthusiasts who will  
register their disillusionment by taking to the streets. Franklin D.  
Roosevelt was not a radical, but he was more sensitive to the  
economic crisis in the country and more susceptible to pressure from  
the Left than was Herbert Hoover.
	Even for the "purist" of radicals, there must be recognition of  
differences that may mean life or death for thousands. In France at  
the time of the Algerian war, the election of DeGaulle—hardly an  
anti-imperialist but more aware of the inevitable decline of empires— 
was significant in ending that long and brutal occupation.
	I have no doubt that by far the wisest, most reliable, with the most  
integrity, of all recent Presidential candidates is Ralph Nader. But  
I think it is a waste of his political strength, a puny act, to  
expend it in the electoral arena, where the result can only show  
weakness. His power, his intelligence, lies in the mobilization of  
people outside the ballot box.
	So yes, I will vote for Obama, because the corrupt political system  
offers me no choice, but only for the moment I pull down the lever in  
the voting booth.
	Before and after that moment i want to use whatever energy I have to  
push him toward a recognition that he must defy the traditional  
thinkers and corporate interests surrounding him, and pay homage to  
the millions of Americans who want real change.
	One more clarification. My lessons from history about the futility  
of "winning" should not be understood as meaning that what is wrong  
with our policy in Iraq is that we can't win. It's that we shouldn't  
win, because it's not our country.
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