Howard Zinn: Excerpts
Excerpts from the book
Terrorism And War
by Howard Zinn
Seven Stories Press, 2002
p9 The continued expenditure of more than $300 billion for the military every year has absolutely no effect on the danger of terrorism. If we want real security, we will have to change our posture in the world - to stop being an intervening military power and to stop dominating the economies of other countries. According to a 1997 Defense Science Board report, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.
p14 I don't think it's hard to figure out why the United States is so concerned with the Middle East. You can answer that question with one word: oil. At the time of World War II, the U.S. government made the decision that it was going to be the major power controlling the oil resources of the Middle East.
p15 New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (before the Gulf War). The United States has not sent troops to the Saudi desert to preserve democratic principles. The Saudi monarchy is a feudal regime that does not even allow women to drive cars. Surely it is not American policy to make the world safe for feudalism. This is about money, about protecting governments loyal to America and punishing those that are not and about who will set the price of oil.... Oil is the single most important commodity in the industrial world, and its assured supply at reasonable prices is considered essential for economic growth-not just in the United States but also in Western Europe, Japan and the world at large.
p16 To try to explain and understand terrorism is not to justify terrorism. But if you don't try to explain anything, you will never learn anything.
p24 War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is to how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.
p28 There is a precise division between who we bomb and who we don't bomb. The division has nothing to do with which countries may be harboring terrorists. The division has only to do with which countries we don't control yet. The countries that we control, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can harbor as many terrorists as they want. We will look elsewhere.The advantage of [the] strategy of expanding the war and winning the "war on terrorism" is that it gives the government a perpetual war and a perpetual atmosphere of repression. And it generates perpetual profits for corporations. But it's going to make the world a far more unstable and dangerous place.
p37 The Bush administration is using the war as a cover for worsening the income gap in this country, while paying no attention to the problems of most of the American people, while enriching corporations. I think concentrating on the class issue, concentrating on the benefits being given to corporations, is critical.
p38 The left is in a position of continually opposing war after war after war, without getting at the root of the problem-which is the economic system under which we live, which needs war and makes war inevitable.
p39 Pastor Niemoller's famous statement about the Nazis because it's so applicable to the present situation: First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist-so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat-so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew-so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.
p44 From a long term point of view the security of the people of the United States depends on the health and well-being of the rest of the world.
p48 Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.
p53 If you forget history you will believe anything.
p57 Phrases such as the one Bush used after September 11 - "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists"- are rather terrifying. It means that if you're not supporting the government, you're an enemy of the government. All of this produces a kind of hysteria, which leads to what I think can only be described as a lynch spirit...This idea that "you mustn't criticize your government and you must fall in line behind the president" is really a great danger to the very democracy that Bush claims we are defending by going to war.
p59 Democracy isn't [about] falling in line behind the president. Democracy is for people to think independently, be skeptical of government, look around and try to find out what's going on. And if they find out that government is deceiving them, to speak out as loudly as they can. That's democracy.
p65 We have a long tradition in this country of stifling dissent exactly at those moments when dissent is badly needed. Exactly when you need free speech-when the lives of the young people in the armed forces, the lives of people overseas who may be the victims of our armed actions, are at stake-that's when they say you should shut up. Exactly when you need debate and free expression most. So you have free speech for trivial issues, and not for life-and-death issues, and that's called democracy. No, we can't accept that.
p62 The one thing that enables the authorities to deceive the public is to keep the public in a state of amnesia, to keep the public from thinking back to the history of war, the history of violence, the history of government deception, the history of media complicity and deception.
p82 The claim that smart bombs and technology now enable pinpoint bombing is very much a fraud. They discovered after the Gulf War that 93 percent of the bombs turned out not to be so-called smart bombs and the "smart" bombs often missed their targets. Overall, 70 percent of our bombs missed their targets.
p96 Missile defense is fundamentally a program to make profits for the corporations that are going to get the billions of dollars in contracts to build the system. This is an enormous theft from the American people. Remember the quote from Eisenhower. He said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
p97 Corporations that produce weapons make huge profits from these weapons of war and therefore are happy both to prepare for war and to engage in war. You prepare for war, you have all these government contracts, and make all this money, and then you engage in war and you use up all these products and you have to replace them.
p101 Mark Twain wrote an essay called "The War Prayer":"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst."
Terrorism And War
by Howard Zinn
Seven Stories Press, 2002
p9 The continued expenditure of more than $300 billion for the military every year has absolutely no effect on the danger of terrorism. If we want real security, we will have to change our posture in the world - to stop being an intervening military power and to stop dominating the economies of other countries. According to a 1997 Defense Science Board report, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.
p14 I don't think it's hard to figure out why the United States is so concerned with the Middle East. You can answer that question with one word: oil. At the time of World War II, the U.S. government made the decision that it was going to be the major power controlling the oil resources of the Middle East.
p15 New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (before the Gulf War). The United States has not sent troops to the Saudi desert to preserve democratic principles. The Saudi monarchy is a feudal regime that does not even allow women to drive cars. Surely it is not American policy to make the world safe for feudalism. This is about money, about protecting governments loyal to America and punishing those that are not and about who will set the price of oil.... Oil is the single most important commodity in the industrial world, and its assured supply at reasonable prices is considered essential for economic growth-not just in the United States but also in Western Europe, Japan and the world at large.
p16 To try to explain and understand terrorism is not to justify terrorism. But if you don't try to explain anything, you will never learn anything.
p24 War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is to how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.
p28 There is a precise division between who we bomb and who we don't bomb. The division has nothing to do with which countries may be harboring terrorists. The division has only to do with which countries we don't control yet. The countries that we control, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can harbor as many terrorists as they want. We will look elsewhere.The advantage of [the] strategy of expanding the war and winning the "war on terrorism" is that it gives the government a perpetual war and a perpetual atmosphere of repression. And it generates perpetual profits for corporations. But it's going to make the world a far more unstable and dangerous place.
p37 The Bush administration is using the war as a cover for worsening the income gap in this country, while paying no attention to the problems of most of the American people, while enriching corporations. I think concentrating on the class issue, concentrating on the benefits being given to corporations, is critical.
p38 The left is in a position of continually opposing war after war after war, without getting at the root of the problem-which is the economic system under which we live, which needs war and makes war inevitable.
p39 Pastor Niemoller's famous statement about the Nazis because it's so applicable to the present situation: First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist-so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat-so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew-so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.
p44 From a long term point of view the security of the people of the United States depends on the health and well-being of the rest of the world.
p48 Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.
p53 If you forget history you will believe anything.
p57 Phrases such as the one Bush used after September 11 - "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists"- are rather terrifying. It means that if you're not supporting the government, you're an enemy of the government. All of this produces a kind of hysteria, which leads to what I think can only be described as a lynch spirit...This idea that "you mustn't criticize your government and you must fall in line behind the president" is really a great danger to the very democracy that Bush claims we are defending by going to war.
p59 Democracy isn't [about] falling in line behind the president. Democracy is for people to think independently, be skeptical of government, look around and try to find out what's going on. And if they find out that government is deceiving them, to speak out as loudly as they can. That's democracy.
p65 We have a long tradition in this country of stifling dissent exactly at those moments when dissent is badly needed. Exactly when you need free speech-when the lives of the young people in the armed forces, the lives of people overseas who may be the victims of our armed actions, are at stake-that's when they say you should shut up. Exactly when you need debate and free expression most. So you have free speech for trivial issues, and not for life-and-death issues, and that's called democracy. No, we can't accept that.
p62 The one thing that enables the authorities to deceive the public is to keep the public in a state of amnesia, to keep the public from thinking back to the history of war, the history of violence, the history of government deception, the history of media complicity and deception.
p82 The claim that smart bombs and technology now enable pinpoint bombing is very much a fraud. They discovered after the Gulf War that 93 percent of the bombs turned out not to be so-called smart bombs and the "smart" bombs often missed their targets. Overall, 70 percent of our bombs missed their targets.
p96 Missile defense is fundamentally a program to make profits for the corporations that are going to get the billions of dollars in contracts to build the system. This is an enormous theft from the American people. Remember the quote from Eisenhower. He said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
p97 Corporations that produce weapons make huge profits from these weapons of war and therefore are happy both to prepare for war and to engage in war. You prepare for war, you have all these government contracts, and make all this money, and then you engage in war and you use up all these products and you have to replace them.
p101 Mark Twain wrote an essay called "The War Prayer":"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst."
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