Howard Zinn: What the left thinks
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By Dennis Prager
Town Hall
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Every so often, one hears the argument that "Left and Right" are outdated terms, or that there really aren't enormous differences in the ways the Left and Right view America, the world, men and women, and just about every other important aspect of life. I wish this were true. But the gaps between the Left and Right on almost every issue that matters -- including and especially issues of good and evil -- are in fact unbridgeable.
That is why, for many years, I have invited leading representatives of the intellectual Left onto my radio show. Not in order to debate them (though I would be happy to do so at any college), but in order to clarify for listeners exactly what the Left believes.
I recently dialogued with an icon of the Left, Howard Zinn, professor emeritus of political science at Boston University, author of "A People's History of the United States," lauded by The New York Times as "required reading" for all American students. And, as Wikipedia notes, it "has been adopted as required reading in high schools and colleges throughout the United States."
Dennis Prager: I think a good part of your view is summarized when you say, "If people knew history, they would scoff at that, they would laugh at that" -- the idea that the United States is a force for the betterment of humanity. I believe that we are the country that has done more good for humanity than any other in history. What would you say . . . we have done more bad than good, we're in the middle, or what?
Howard Zinn: Probably more bad than good. We've done some good, of course; there's no doubt about that. But we have done too many bad things in the world. You know, if you look at the way we have used our armed forces throughout our history: first destroying the Indian communities of this continent and annihilating Indian tribes, then going into the Caribbean in the Spanish-American War, going to the Philippines, taking over other countries, not establishing democracy but in many cases establishing dictatorship, holding up dictatorships in Latin America and giving them arms, and you know, Vietnam, killing several million people for no good reason at all, certainly not for democracy or liberty, and continuing down to the present day with the war in Iraq . . . .
DP: There is evil in the way we treated the Indians, there is no question about it. But there's also no question that the great majority died of disease and not deliberately inflicted disease.
HZ: That's true that the great majority of Indians died of disease in the 17th century when the Europeans first came here. But after that -- after the American Revolution -- when the colonists expanded from the thin band of colonies along the Atlantic and expanded westward, at that point we began to annihilate the Indian tribes. We committed massacres all over the country . . . .
DP: What percentage of the Indians do you believe we massacred, as opposed to diseases ravaged?
HZ: Oh, well it might have been 10 percent.
DP: But 10 percent is very different from the generalization of "we annihilated the Indians."
HZ: Oh, well 10 percent is a huge number of Indians, that is. So it's pointless I think to argue about whether disease . . . or deliberate attacks killed more Indians . . . .
DP: No, but 10 percent is very different from what the general statement of "annihilate" tends to indicate. That's all I am saying.
HZ: Okay.
DP: If, let's say, Europeans never came to North America and it was left in the hands of the American indigenous Indians, do you think the world would be a better place?
HZ: I'd have no way of knowing.
DP: So you're agnostic on that.
HZ: Absolutely. We have no way of knowing what would have happened.
DP: Well, we do have a way of knowing. If the Indians had never been intervened with, they would have continued in the life and the values of the societies that the American Indians made.
HZ: Well, I suppose we could presume that. And many of their societies were very peaceful and benign, and some of their societies were ferocious and warlike. But the point is that we very often sort of justify barging into other peoples' territories by the fact that we are sort of bringing civilization. But in the course of it, if in the course of bringing civilization we kill large numbers of people -- which we did in that case and which we have done in other cases -- then you're led to question whether what we did deserves to be praised or condemned.
DP: Well, you can do both. You can condemn the massacres and you can praise the civilization that we made here.
DP: I believe that we [Americans] fought in Korea in order to enable at least half of that benighted peninsula to live in relative freedom and prosperity; the half that we did not liberate is living in the nightmare, almost Nazi-like, condition of the North Korean government. Why don't you see that as a great good that Americans did?
HZ: I think that your description of the North Korean government is accurate. It's sort of a monstrous government. But when we went to war in Korea the result of that war was the deaths of several million people. And I question whether the deaths . . . were worth the result. . . .
DP: If America had never intervened, do we both agree that Kim Il-sung, the psychopathic dictator of North Korea, would have ruled over the entire Korean peninsula?
HZ: I think that's probably true.
DP: Do you believe that that would be a net moral or immoral result for the Korean people and the world?
HZ: That would have been an immoral result, but the result of the war itself was also immoral -- I'm talking about the killing of several million people. And what I'm suggesting is that the answer to . . . tyrannies like that is not war, which in our time always involves the massive killing of innocent people. . . . I think we have to find ways other than war to get rid of dictatorships and tyrannies.
DP: I would love that. But this is where we often consider people on the Left, at best, to be naive. . . . Let's talk about that naivete. You believe that there would have been another way to get rid of the Korean communists -- whom we both agree are monstrous -- as opposed to the Korean War. . . . This is the naivete of the Left, that ugly things can be gotten rid of in sweet ways.
HZ: Not sweet ways. I wouldn't say that. And I wouldn't say either in totally peaceful ways . . . by struggle and resistance but not by war. We have historical examples of what I'm talking about. The Soviet Union, Stalinism, was not overthrown by war. . . . Stalinism was really replaced, in time, by the Russian people themselves. . . . What I'm suggesting is that there are a number of places in the world where we have had tyrannies that have been overthrown without war. . . .
DP: Yes, there are. No one would deny that. And there are historical examples of where war is the only way to achieve a moral end.
HZ: Well, I'm not sure that's the only way.
DP: Was there another way to have gotten rid of Hitler?
HZ: In the case of WWII, I don't know what it would have taken to get rid of Hitler. We certainly had to resist him, we certainly had to get rid of him. . . . What bothers me most today is that people use WWII as an example for what we should do today. It's a very different situation.
DP: No, we use it as an example of where war is the moral choice. Are you prepared to say that war is ever the best moral choice?
HZ: No.
DP: Never. Not even against Hitler?
HZ: Well, I'm not sure about WWII.
DP: Wow . . .
HZ: War has reached the point where when you wage war . . . there's always a war against innocent people. . . . Let's be very specific about today. Take the situation in Iraq. War is not a way to bring democracy to Iraq. We are not succeeding at it . . . we're killing large numbers of people.
DP: Why are we not succeeding?
HZ: Because there is so much resistance in Iraq to the presence of a foreign invader.
DP: No, there's so much resistance in Iraq to the presence of democracy. That's where you and I have a different read on the resistance. . . . You feel that they are resisting the United States, and I feel that they are resisting democracy by blowing up their fellow citizens and hoping for moral chaos and civil war.
HZ: Well there certainly is civil war in Iraq. And we have brought it to Iraq.
We have brought it by the occupation of our troops. . . . Iraq is in chaos. Iraq is in violence. And the United States military presence has done nothing to stop that. It's only aggravated it and provoked it. And the best thing we can do for Iraq right now is to get out of the place, and save the lives of our young people.
DP: What would happen if we did get out? Do you think that there would be fewer people dead or more?
HZ: I would hope that there would be fewer people dead.
DP: I believe if we left, the bloodbath would make what is happening now look like a very sad episode but not a bloodbath.
HZ: . . . The point is that war is the worst possible solution.
DP: That's where we differ. It isn't the worst possible. There are worse things than war. More people have died in North Korea . . . than died in the war that you thought we shouldn't have waged. . . . So it isn't the worst possible. It wasn't the worst possible versus the Japanese. It wasn't the worst possible versus the Nazis. Is it the worst possible in Afghanistan? Are we wrong there too?
HZ: It is the worst. In Afghanistan it was not a good idea to wage war on Afghanistan. Because the fact is that Bush did not know where Osama bin Laden was except that he was in the country. So what does he do? He bombs the country, kills 3,000 at least ordinary Afghans. That's as many as died in the Twin Towers. And today after these years of bombing Afghanistan, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. What have we accomplished in Afghanistan? The Taliban is back.
DP: No, it's not back.
HZ: The Taliban now controls much of the country.
DP: But it doesn't control Kabul. It doesn't control the major cities. And women are now free to step out of their homes. Doesn't that matter to you? HZ: It matters a lot to me. But I don't think that liberation of women matters a lot to the Bush administration. . . .
DP: Whatever your view [about the war in Iraq] . . . would you say that by and large the people that we are fighting, the so-called insurgents, the people who blow up marketplaces and try to create civil war, are bad or evil people? Or would you not make a moral judgment?
HZ: I would certainly make a moral judgment about people who blow up things, who kill innocent people. And I would make a moral judgment on ourselves because we are killing innocent people in Iraq.
DP: So do you feel that, by and large, the Zarqawi-world and the Bush-world are moral equivalents?
HZ: I do. I would put Bush on trial along with Saddam Hussein, because I think both of them are responsible for the deaths of many, many people in Iraq, and so, yes, I think that. Killing innocent people is immoral when Iraqis do it, and when we do it, it is the same thing.
DP: Although we don't target them, but I won't get into that debate. I am just fleshing out your views.
HZ: Actually we should get into that. You know, as a former Air Force volunteer I can tell you, it is not necessary to target civilians. You just inevitably kill them. And the result is the same as if you targeted them.
DP: But we have a different punishment for premeditated murder and for accidental murder.
HZ: Yeah, but when you accidentally kill 100 times as many people as the other side kills in a premeditated way . . .
DP: But we haven't done that . . .
HZ: But we have.
DP: Not in Iraq we certainly haven't.
HZ: No, in Vietnam . . .
DP: Don't go to Vietnam every time I ask an Iraq question.
HZ: OK.
DP: Next, Israel and its enemies. Would you say that Israel and Hezbollah are also moral equivalents?
HZ: Well, first of all, I certainly oppose Hezbollah's firing rockets into Israel, and I think Israel reacted with absolutely unjustified immoral indiscriminate force. I mean, you look at the casualties on both sides, and the casualties among civilians in Lebanon is 10 times the casualties . . .
DP: Well, the casualties in Germany were 10 times those of the casualties in Britain. So are Britain and Hitler morally equivalent? You are making the assessment of morality on the basis of numbers killed.
HZ: No. I think regardless of the numbers, when you kill innocent people there is immorality. So there is immorality on both sides, but I think there is a case in the case of Israel where you have to get back to fundamental causes.
The fundamental cause of the violence on both sides is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and so long as that occupation continues . . .
DP: But they got out of Gaza. And according to President Clinton, the Palestinians were offered a Palestinian state with 97 percent of their land and 3 percent more from Israel.
HZ: Well that's according to President Clinton. But not according to a lot of people who have been studying the Middle East . . .
DP: A lot of people on the Left, but not a lot of people studying it.
DP: Professor Zinn, I thank you so much for your time.
HZ: Thanks.
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