Posted on 29-4-2004

Dying For Words
by Ryan White, April 26, 2004

Howard Zinn is one of America's most well-known and influential
intellectuals. A professor emeritus at Boston University, Zinn has been a
passionate and articulate dissident, speaking out against the injustices
of war, racism and corporate rule. An author and playwright, Zinn has
published countless critical essays and books, including the bestselling A
People's History of the United States.

RW: During the first Iraq war you wrote that “Bush [Sr.] did talk about
oil. Then he got the notion that this is embarrassing. People will not die
for oil. They will die for words; democracy, liberation, freedom...” To
what degree does this apply to this war and this president?

HZ: It applies to this president as much as it did to Bush Sr., because
the whole Bush family has been involved with the oil industry for a very
long time. Aside from that, it's not just the Bush family. It's that
American foreign policy has been based on the control of mid-east oil ever
since the end of World War II. Every administration, Democrat or
Republican, since World War II has been concerned with the control of
mid-east oil.

RW: Do you agree with the Bush administration's argument that this is a
war for freedom?

HZ: No. Historically, every war that we have fought has been a war for
“our freedom” or “somebody's freedom.” Most of the time this has turned
out not to be true. The war in Vietnam was considered a war for freedom
and it certainly wasn't. Most of our foreign policy and military
interventions have not been on behalf of free societies but on behalf of
dictatorships. In fact, we have overthrown governments which were free,
which had freely elected leaders like Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.
We have overthrown democratically elected governments and set up
dictatorships. The idea that we are fighting in Iraq for freedom just does
not square with history and doesn't square with what we are doing in Iraq.

It's obvious that the Iraqi people want us out. If we stood for freedom,
they would not want us out. What we stand for is a military occupation of
brutality. Breaking into their homes, dragging people out. The American
military is holding 15, 000 Iraqis in detention without trial. They're
very often released six months later without even being told what the
charges were that were against them, if there were charges against them.

So we have not brought freedom to Iraq, we have not brought security to
Iraq, we have not brought democracy and our aims in Iraq are not democracy
or liberty, our aims in Iraq are very crass. They are the aims of imperial
powers throughout modern times. The aims are the control of their
governments, control of their resources, and in this case it's the control
of oil.

There are political reasons for going to war and we have also seen this
historically. John F. Kennedy was making the decision as to whether or not
to withdraw troops from Vietnam on the basis of what would happen in the
1964 presidential election.

RW: Over the past year people across the world have protested the
occupation of Iraq in record numbers. How important have these citizen
protests been?

HZ: Well, the protests around the world obviously did not stop the Bush
administration from going to war. On February 15 of last year, which was
shortly before the United States went to war, 10-15 million people around
the world protested on a single day against the idea of a war in Iraq.
That did not stop the Bush administration. However, I wouldn't say that it
did not have an effect. It had an effect, I think, on encouraging people
around the world to continue to struggle against war. It had an effect,
most recently, on the election in Spain, where the people in Spain, 90 per
cent of whom had opposed the war and who certainly were in tune with that
10-15 million people last February 15 voted out of office a Prime Minister
who supported a war.

RW: Saddam Hussein has been removed but that hasn't stopped the Iraqi
resistance. What happens now?

HW: Things are going to get worse so long as the American occupation
exists. American political leaders, Democrats as well as Republicans,
[John] Kerry as well as Bush, are saying we must stay in Iraq, we must
stay the course, we must be resolute and even send more troops. This is
the same disastrous advice that was given in Vietnam in the early years of
the war when it became apparent that this was not going to be an easy
victory. There was huge Vietnamese resistance to us and when some people
called for withdrawal from Vietnam the political leaders said no, we
cannot cut and run and the result was that we stayed in Vietnam and huge
numbers of people lost their lives, and in the end we had to cut and run.
In the end we are going to have to get out of Iraq. If not sooner, then
later. Iraq does not belong to us.

RW: You have written a great deal about the press and the role that it has
played in gaining support for this war and past wars. How can citizens
work to regain a free press?

HZ:Even when the press is criticizing the administration it is criticizing
it in a very superficial way. It is not getting down to fundamentals; it
is criticizing the administration the way that John Kerry is criticizing
the administration. [It's] saying “well it's just waging a war the wrong
way,” instead of saying we should not be waging war at all. Or to say “we
need to fight terrorism in a different way, maybe not in Iraq, maybe
somewhere else.” It's not discussing the more fundamental question and
that is can you fight terrorism by military action? Terrorism cannot be
brought to an end until you get rid of [the] underlying grievances that
people have, that huge numbers of people have.

RW: You talked about the “war on terrorism.” The U.S. has been fighting
this so-called war now for nearly three years and the impact is being felt
everywhere. For example, in Canada we are seeing a crackdown on civil
liberties and on immigrants. Is there a precedent for such an open-ended
war and such an attack on citizen's rights and what can be done?

HZ: A crackdown on civil liberties, [is there] a precedent? Of course.
Every time there is a foreign policy crisis there is a crackdown on civil
liberties. Starting with 1798 and the Alien Sedition Act where people were
put in prison for criticizing the government. During the Civil War,
President Lincoln violated the constitution and did away with the right of
habeas corpus and put people in jail merely on suspicion — the kind of
things that are happening now under the Patriot Act.

In World War I there were very gross violations of civil liberties. About
a thousand people were put in jail simply for criticizing the American
entrance into the war. Thousands of people were deported from the United
States. Foreign-born people who were not citizens were deported without
trial, without hearings and so we've seen again and again that whenever
there is a foreign policy crisis there is a violation of civil liberties.
The Cold War brought McCarthyism, it brought loyalty oaths, it brought the
FBI putting seven million people on its various lists.

So this is nothing new, except that this may be one of the worst civil
liberties situations we've had in a long time because of the Patriot Act
which enables the Attorney General and the government to simply pick up
people, American citizens, and charge them on suspicion with being
connected with terrorism and keep them without hearings, without access to
lawyers, without a trial — methods that are gross violations of
constitutional rights. That's the kind of thing that happens in a
totalitarian state. It shouldn't happen in a democracy.

Ryan White is a volunteer journalist with the Ontarion, the University of
Guelph's Independent Student Newspaper.