Our learned history of war - By Ben Krohling
Born in 1976 and growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, I never thought about war and what it meant. I like most of my class mates, learned a little about the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War and the protests. I never had much interest in what people were calling the Cold War; all I knew was that the Soviet Union was the “bad guy.” It wasn’t until high school that I remember some older kids protesting Operation Desert Storm and Persian Gulf War. I didn’t know why they were protesting, and I didn’t really care. All I really knew was that my father, who had voluntarily signed up for the Army and served in Vietnam, told me never to join the military.
It wasn’t until I decided to go back to obtain my Master’s Degree in Sociology, that I finally was enlightened to our history of wars. It was in my Social Movements course that I was introduced to a video produced for Howard Zinn’s research on the history of the United States. I was intrigued enough to borrow the book written by Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present.” In it, I discovered a whole other side or perspective on the content of our history of the U.S. I was blown away; and even a little mad! I asked myself, why wasn’t I taught this in our public schools!?
Throughout my academic career studying sociology, I was learning about Critical Sociology and was developing critical thinking skills. I had thought this is what Howard Zinn had done when writing this book. He had taken a critical look at the history of the U.S., compared to the conventional narrative I was taught growing up. I felt that not only was I lied to, but that our entire country had been misinformed or at least uninformed.
I would like to share with those who took the time read up to this point, some quotes and paraphrases that I have pulled from “A People’s History,” in hopes that others will take the time to read this book and share their thoughts with others. Although I feel betrayed by those with the power to shape the narrative of our American history, I also feel empowered knowing and understanding the different perspectives detailed throughout Howard Zinn’s research, and feel a stronger connection to our past.
“Warring has always taken precious needed resources away from those who need them and from those who pay taxes used to finance war” (Zinn 2003:52).
“White Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West” during the Revolution (Zinn 2003:86).
Horace Greeley on the war with Mexico: “Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?” (Zinn 2003:159).
“The American government had set out to fight the slave states in 1861, not to end slavery, but to retain the enormous national territory and market and resources” (Zinn 2003:198).
1901 black infantryman on his deployment to the Philippine Islands: “This struggle on the islands has been naught but a gigantic scheme of robbery and oppression” (Zinn 2003:319).
Concerning the Spanish-American war, anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman: “…that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists” (Zinn 2003:321).
Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan in 1914 praised President Wilson as the one who had “opened up the doors of all the weaker countries to an invasion of American capital and American enterprise” (Zinn 2003:362). In 1907 Wilson stated in a lecture, “Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process…the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down.” “In his 1912 campaign he said: ‘Our domestic markets no longer suffice, we need foreign markets.’” “In 1914 he said he supported ‘the righteous conquest of foreign markets’” (Zinn 2003:362).
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Yes, the average citizen of England, France, Germany, the U.S., had a higher standard of living than before. But ‘Whence comes this new wealth? It comes primarily from the darker nations of the world – Asia and Africa, South and Central America, the West Indies, and the islands of the South Seas.’” “It is no longer simply the merchant prince, or the aristocratic monopoly, or even the employing class, that is exploiting the world: it is the nation, a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor.” “American capitalism needed international rivalry – and periodic war – to create an artificial community of interest between rich and poor” (Zinn 2003:363).
Eugene Debs on the Espionage Act and WWI: “They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke…. Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder…. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles” (Zinn 2003:367).
Following WWII, then Assistant Secretary of State, critical of U.S. foreign policy: “the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief…without moral purpose of human interest” (Zinn 2003:414).
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: “…war between nations or classes or races cannot permanently settle conflicts or heal the wounds that brought them into being” (Zinn 2003:420).
French worker-philosopher Simone Weil: “Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battlelines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others” (Zinn 2003:420).
Revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste predicted in 1941: “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will teach him a lesson?” (Zinn 2003:424).
“The war [WWII] not only put the U.S. in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home. The biggest gains were in corporate profits; but enough went to workers and farmers to make them feel the system was doing well for them. Charles E. Wilson, the president of G.M., was so happy about the wartime situation that he suggested a continuing alliance between business and the military for a ‘permanent war economy.’” This then led to the cold war with the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes (Zinn 2003:425).
By 1970, “two-thirds of the $40 billion spent on weapons systems was going to twelve of fifteen giant industrial corporations, whose main reason for existence was to fulfill government military contracts” (Zinn 2003:437).
C. Wright Mills “counted the military as part of the top elite, along with politicians and corporations. These elements were more and more intertwined” (Zinn 2003:438).
The CIA was being used to overthrow countries that nationalized their resources even if they were a democratic country (Zinn 2003:439).
MLK, Jr. connecting war to poverty: “…it’s inevitable that we’ve got to bring out the question of the tragic mixup in priorities. We are spending all of this money for death and destruction, and not nearly enough money for life and constructive development…when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer” (Zinn 2003:462).
1963 Kennedy’s Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, speaking before the Economic Club of Detroit concerning Southeast Asia prior to the Vietnam War: “Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses…” (Zinn 2003:475).
“The Vietnam war gave clear evidence that at least for that war (making one wonder about the others) the political leaders were the last to take steps to end the war – ‘the people’ were far ahead. The President was always far behind. The Supreme Court silently turned away from cases challenging the Constitutionality of the war. Congress was years behind public opinion” (Zinn 2003:498).
Samuel Braithwaite concerning protest of war: “Well done for trying to heal the sick irresponsible men, men who were chosen by the people to govern and lead them. These men, who failed to the people by raining death and destruction on a hapless country…. You went out to do your part while your brothers remained in their ivory towers watching…and hopefully some day in the near future, peace and harmony may reign to people of all nations” (Zinn 2003:501).
“…violence breeds only more violence…” (Zinn 2003:529).
The conglomeration of media and reporting has led to instance after “instance of cooperation between the mass media and the government in instances of ‘national security’” (Zinn 2003:555).
Noam Chomsky on the Vietnam War history: “…they were destroying the historical record and supplanting it with a more comfortable story…reducing ‘lessons’ of the war to the socially neutral categories of error, ignorance, and cost” (Zinn 2003:567).
The “School of the Americas” was a U.S. military training facility “of foreign military officers” (Zinn 2003:569).
Foreign aid often “depended on political loyalty” to the U.S. This includes food for humanitarian relief. Aid, military or otherwise, is also given to “repressive regimes” (Zinn 2003:569).
While military spending increased and tax cuts were given mostly “to the wealthy,” Regan made cuts in benefits to the poor (Zinn 2003:577).
In 1984 Congress “made it illegal for the U.S. to support ‘directly or indirectly,’ military or paramilitary operations,” but this was ignored by the Regan administration (Zinn 2003:585).
“The whole Iran-contra affair became a perfect example of the double line of defense of the American Establishment. The first defense is to deny the truth. If exposed, the second defense is to investigate, but not too much; the press will publicize, but they will not get to the heart of the matter” (Zinn 2003:586).
Once the scandal was out in the open, neither the Congressional investigating committees nor the press nor the trial of Colonel Oliver North, who oversaw the contra aid operation, got to the critical question: What is U.S. foreign policy all about? How are the president and his staff permitted to support a terrorist group in Central America to overthrow a government that, whatever its faults, is welcomed by its own people as a great improvement over the terrible governments the U.S. has supported there for years? What does the scandal tell us about democracy, about freedom of expression, about an open society?” (Zinn 2003:586).
The Iran-contra affair was only one of the many instances in which the government of the U.S. violated its own laws in pursuit of some desired goal in foreign policy” (Zinn 2003:588).
The reason given for the unnecessary invasion of Grenada by a high American official was, “What good are maneuvers and shows of force, if you never use it” (Zinn 2003:588).
In 1983, Regan vetoed a law to require certification of progress in human rights before military aid could be given to foreign countries (Zinn 2003:590).
U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, on the cold war: “we paid with forty years of enormous and otherwise unnecessary military expenditures. We paid through the cultivation of nuclear weaponry to the point where the vast and useless nuclear arsenal had become (and remains today) a danger to the very environment of the planet” (Zinn 2003:592).
“Several trillion dollars had been taken from American citizens in the form of taxes to maintain a huge nuclear and nonnuclear arsenal and military bases all over the world – all primarily justified by the ‘Soviet threat’” (Zinn 2003:592).
“Thus foreign interventions presented to the public as ‘in the national interest’ were really undertaken for special interests, for which American people were asked to sacrifice their sons and their tax dollars” (Zinn 2003:593).
“After the war, fifteen Washington news bureau chiefs complained in a joint statement that the Pentagon exercised ‘virtual total control…over the American press’ during the Gulf War” (Zinn 2003:598).
“The very intensity of the air assault on Iraq gives rise to concern that the conduct of the war may come to be seen as evidence that Americans view Arab lives as worthless…. And that raises the moral question of the proportionality of response” (Zinn 2003:600).
Concerning the U.S. Gulf war’s victory, poet June Jordan wrote: “I suggest to you it’s a hit the same way that crack is, and it doesn’t last long” (Zinn 2003:600).
Concerning military spending: “G.E. drains $3 million a day from the public treasury – an enormous larceny” (Zinn 2003:602).
Concerning the Selective Service System, James Peters: “We have tried militarism, and it has failed the human race in every way imaginable” (Zinn 2003:605).
Mary Belle Dressler: “Personally, parades that honor the military are somewhat troublesome to me because the military is about war, and war is troublesome to me” (Zinn 2003:619).
Patricia Briggs concerning the Gulf War; “I don’t think we should be over there. I don’t think it’s about justice and liberty, I think it’s about economics. The big oil corporations have a lot to do with what is going on over there…. We are risking peoples’ lives for money” (Zinn 2003:621).
Professor of history and political science Phillip Avillo: “Yes we need to support our men and women under arms. But let’s support them by bringing them home, not by condoning this barbarous violent policy” (Zinn 2003:621).
Black leaders in New York criticized the ongoing attacks on Iraq as “an immoral and unspiritual diversion…a blatant evasion of our domestic responsibilities” (Zinn 2003:622).
In Selma, Alabama, which had been the scene of bloody police violence against civil rights marchers twenty-six years before, a meeting to observe the anniversary of that ‘bloody Sunday’ demanded that ‘our troops be brought home alive to fight for justice at home” (Zinn 2003:622).
Marine Corps corporal Jeff Paterson in 1990: “I have come to believe that there are no justified wars…. I began to question exactly what I was doing in the Marine Corps about the time I began to read about history. I began to read up on America’s support for the murderous regimes of Guatemala, Iran under the Shah, and El Salvador…. I object to the military use of force against any people, anywhere, any time” (Zinn 2003:623).
Marine Corps reservist lance corporal Erik Larsen: “I declare myself a conscientious objector. Here is my sea bag full of personal gear. Here is my gas mask. I no longer need them. I am no longer a Marine…. It, to me, is embarrassing to fight for a way of life in which basic human needs, like a place to sleep, one hot meal a day and some medical attention, cannot even be met in our nation’s capital” (Zinn 2003:624).
“After the disintegration of the Soviet bloc began in 1989, there had been talk in the U.S. of a ‘peace dividend,’ the opportunity to take billions of dollars from the military budget and use it for human needs. The war in the Gulf became a convenient excuse for the government determined to stop such talk. A member of the Bush administration said: “We owe Saddam a favor. He saved us from the peace dividend” (New York Times, March 2, 1991) (Zinn 2003:625).
Historian Marilyn Young: “The U.S. can destroy Iraq’s highways, but not build its own; create the conditions for epidemic in Iraq, but not offer health care to millions of Americans. It can excoriate Iraqi treatment of the Kurdish minority, but not deal with domestic race relations; created homelessness abroad but not solve it here; keep a half million troops drug free as part of a war, but refuse to fund the treatment of millions of drug addicts at home…. We shall lose the war after we have won it” (Zinn 2003:625).
A group of Native Americans in Oregon comparing their history with the invasion of Iraq in 1991: “Dear President Bush. Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources. They used biological warfare and deceit, killing thousands of elders, children and women in the process. As they overwhelmed our land, they deposed our leaders and people of our own government, and in its place, they installed their own government systems that yet today control our daily lives in many ways. As in your own words, the occupation and overthrow of one small nation…is one too many. Sincerely, An American Indian (Zinn 2003:627).
A student of the teacher Bill Bigelow concerning conventional history texts: “It seemed to me as if the publishers had just printed up some ‘glory story’ that was supposed to make us feel more patriotic about our country…. They want us to look at our country as great and powerful and forever right…” (Zinn 2003:628).
MLK, Jr.: “the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together” (Zinn 2003:644).
Politicians against “big government” really mean, against social services while continuing “huge military contracts and generous subsidies to corporations” (Zinn 2003:650).
“Sending a powerful message” by means of military force fits the definition of terrorism (Zinn 2003:654).
Columnist Molly Ivins: “The maddening thing about terrorists is that they are indiscriminate in their acts of vengeance, or cries for attention, or whatever…. What is true for individuals…must also be true of nations” (Zinn 2003:654).
“By early 1997, the U.S. was selling more arms abroad than all other nations combined. Lawrence Korb, a Department of Defense official under Regan but later a critic of arms sales, wrote: “It has become a money game: an absurd spiral in which we export arms only to have to develop more sophisticated ones to counter those spread out all over the world” (Zinn 2003:656).
U.S. “punitive foreign policies, its military instillations in countries all over the globe” has aroused anger and violence in foreign countries (Zinn 2003:659).
Concerning Yugoslavia: “But it seemed that the Clinton administration, like so many before it (Truman in Korea, Johnson in Vietnam, Bush in the Gulf War) chose military solutions when diplomatic ones were possible” (Zinn 2003:661).
“The militarization of the nation—the huge military budgets, the maintenance of armed forces all over the world, the repeated use of weapons against other countries—meant that the resources available for human needs were not available. In one of his finer moments, President Dwight Eisenhower had said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed” (Zinn 2003:661).
“It was therefore possible to say that the U.S. economy was ‘healthy’—but only if you considered the richest part of the population. Meanwhile, 40 million people were without health insurance (the number having risen by 33 percent in the nineties), and infants died of sickness and malnutrition at a rate higher than that of any other industrialized country. There seemed to be unlimited funds for the military, but people who performed vital human services, in health and education, had to struggle to barely survive” (Zinn 2003:662).
In 1992 Randall Forsberg an expert on military expenditures suggested that “a military budget of 60 billion over a number of years” would be sufficient “to the needs and opportunities” of the U.S. But at the end of Clinton’s term it “was about 300 billion a year” (Zinn 2003:663).
“Instead of giving out contracts for jet bombers and nuclear submarines, contracts could be offered to nonprofit corporations to hire people to build homes, construct public transport systems, clean up the rivers and lakes, turn our cities into decent places to live” (Zinn 2003:665).
U.N. Universal Declaration of Human rights “declared that decent wages, food, housing, healthcare, and education was a right of all people” (Zinn 2003:670).
Concerning the war on terrorism from a wife of an army pilot killed in the Sept. 11th attacks: “I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation’s leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband” (Zinn 2003:681).
“Critics of the bombing campaign argued that terrorism was rooted in deep grievances against the U.S., and that to stop terrorism, these must be addressed. The grievances were not hard to identify: the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, site of the most holy of Moslem shrines; the ten years of sanctions against Iraq which, according to the U.N., had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; the continued U.S. support of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, including billions in military aid” (Zinn 2003:681).
“However, these issues could not be addressed without fundamental changes in American foreign policy. Such changes could not be accepted by the military-industrial complex that dominated both major parties, because they would require withdrawing military forces from around the world, giving up political and economic domination of other countries—in short, relinquishing the cherished role of the U.S. as a superpower” (Zinn 2003:681).
“Such fundamental changes would require a radical change in priorities, from spending $300 to $400 billion a year for the military, to using this wealth to improve the living conditions of Americans and people in other parts of the world. For instance, it was estimated by the World Health Organization that a small portion of the American military budget, if given to the treatment of tuberculosis in the world, could save millions of lives” (Zinn 2003:682).
“The U.S., by such a drastic change in its policies, would no longer be a military superpower, but it could be a humanitarian superpower, using its wealth to help people in need” (Zinn 2003:682).
Former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Robert Bowman concerning U.S. foreign policy: “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in the Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism…. Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children…” (Zinn 2003:682).
“In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear” (Zinn 2003:682).
“Is there a ‘national interest’ when a few people decide on war, and huge numbers of others—here and abroad—are killed or crippled as a result of such a decision? Should citizens not ask in whose interest are we doing what we are doing? Then why not, I came to think, tell the story of wars not through the eyes of the generals and diplomats but from the viewpoints of the GIs, of the parents who received the black-bordered telegrams, even of ‘the enemy’” (Zinn 2003:685).
“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor—inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing—permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the U.S. would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children” (Zinn 2003:685).
Zinn, Howard 2003. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
