Freedom Fries

[habilis]

Alright. The war's over. Can we go back to having French Fries now? I mean, I wasn't happy about France and Germany's decision to not unite with us(The U.S.) against Saddam, but this whole embargo/boycott thing has gone way too far.

I understand that we(The U.S.) paid for this war not only in cash but in 115 American lives but c'mon now, even a hardline neocon like myself understands that any further embargos on France/Germany are detrimental to world affairs.

[Arden]

A nation's decision not to support us in a somewhat unjustified & unjustifiable war, the reason for which we have not uncovered or even proven to be reliable, does not merit boycott of everything with the word "French" in it. We are not and never were at war with France. We were at war with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and the unsupported (by many) renaming of everything French to "freedom" is misplaced patriotism. (Here in Stanislaus County, three dry cleaners, French Cleaners, were all vandalized; they are owned by an Assyrian man!)

Go back to eating your french fries, drinking your French wine, cooking your French toast and French kissing your significant other. Do not let misplaced patriotism affect you in any way.

[anerki]

I still don't get it, fries originated in Belgium!

[toast]

LOL @ anerki !

Howard Zinn just gave a conference tonight in my town. Topic: "US military interventions: a historical perpective".

The conference is organized by friends of mine, CIESIMSA, directed by one of my former teachers, Francis Mc Collum Feeley. Check the news about it here.

Howard Zinn is a historian and a playwright. He taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, then at Boston University. He was active in the civil rights movement, and in the movement against the Vietnam war. He has written many books, his best known being A People's History of the United States. His most recent books include You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (a memori), The Zinn Reader, The Future of History (interviews with David Barsamian) and Marx in Soho (a play).

Zinn is, on a more practical and realistic point of view, a humanist. His views share much with [US: add radical here ] left-wing views. I will write down a summary of my hand notes taken during the conference and will upload them to my site, political studies' page. I'll write it in English.

[habilis]

toast: funny coincidence, last Friday I listened to about 2 hours of that audio book by Zinn; A peoples History of the United States on some underground leftist internet radio station. It was quite riveting. There was also a few speeches by Noam Chomsky that were interesting to say the least. One was a collection of audio from when Chomsky was defending that wacked out college professor that was going around saying the holocaust never happened. The url is on my work mac but I'll have to give it out tomorrow.

[Androo]

hahahaha they were so happy they freedom kissed eachother

[toast]

Originally posted by habilis
toast: funny coincidence, last Friday I listened to about 2 hours of that audio book by Zinn; A peoples History of the United States on some underground leftist internet radio station. It was quite riveting. There was also a few speeches by Noam Chomsky that were interesting to say the least. One was a collection of audio from when Chomsky was defending that wacked out college professor that was going around saying the holocaust never happened. The url is on my work mac but I'll have to give it out tomorrow.

Zinn's book is of interest indeed. Not that his vision of the USA is going to revolutionize the whole USA's history, but still, some elements of it were new to me.

Noam Chomsky speeches are precious material. Chomsky is a very much admired man, not only by his supporters but also by his enemies. Chomsky is basically admired for three things, in ascending order:

1) His work as a linguist. Before being a historian, Chomsky is a brilliant linguist (and his father was, on an even superior level).
2) His studies and his political engagement through his books. Chomsky shares points with anarchist theories, as he does with the left-wing in general.
3) Finally, Chomsky is admired for his overall sincerity and willingness to defend his ideas, which is not a systematic attitude of writers or professors.

Chomsky was defending that wacked out college professor that was going around saying the holocaust never happened.

I'll bring some precision now.

- Chomsky did defend this professor's right to express his ideas, but hopefully not the ideas in themselves, although many people thought and said the contrary.

- The guy you are talking about is Robert Faurisson, literature teacher and psuedo-historian at the university of Lyons. Lyons is #2 biggest town in France. It's about one hour from home by freeway. Faurisson did said the Holocaust was a war myth. He was moreorless banned from the French teaching corp.

- Last year, I worked on this case, the Chomsky-Faurisson affair. I had Faurisson on the phone. I also received emails from him. I also received some illegal books from him, but I can't say more about them on a public board.

I'll be glad to bring any precision to this story here. This study I had to write brought me to consider history as a controversial event, which men could diverge, imagine, invent, falsify, corrupt on some points.

[toast]

Here goes the conference notes. For a more complete version: download attachment. I think these notes are great for discussion. Thousands of opinions can be discussed, using them as a source for debate. Paragraphs numbers are here for this. Be my guests
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USA MILITARY INTERVENTIONS :
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Howard Zinn

Abstract

The following notes were taken during Howard Zinn's intervention in Grenoble, given for the CIESIMSA colloquium on Monday May 5th, 2003. The purpose of the CIESIMSA Research Center is to inspire new scholarship on subjects pertaining to the impact of American society on the contemporary world. You can learn more about the CIESIMSA and the colloquium by visiting their website : http://www.u-grenoble3.fr/ciesimsa/.

I would like to make a few preliminary notes :
1) First, M. Zinn insisted to speak in French (even if tortured, in his own terms). He had to be assisted by a live translator in this difficult task, for French is far from being a language he masters. M.Zinn's efforts are honorable, but restrained his intervention to a quite simple lexical level. Hence, if the terms employed here do not exactly fit, please be indulgent.
2) Second, I am far from being a perfect English speaker myself. I am thus asking for more indulgence for myself. These two first notes should bring the reader to consider the following as simplistic and appealing for correct development.
3) The intervention has been divided into 18 paragraphs. Paragraphs 19 to 25 are questions & answers (of very variable interest) asked after the intervention itself. Paragraphs are moreorless logically divided. The original division was made to make quotation more easy.
4) Finally, please note the opinions developed here are M. Zinn's, not mine. Even though I share many of his points, I disagree on several parts of his speech, as well as I disagree with some more general conceptions his speech is based on.

Finally, I would like to thank Francis McCollum Feeley, who is not only director of the CIESIMSA but also a former teacher and a friend.

François Briatte <thinkhybrid@wanadoo.fr>
Student at Grenoble Institute of Political Studies

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1. Topic is : historical perspective of US military interventions. M. Zinn makes it very clear his will is to be a non-academic type of historian. Although his work is historical (understand the present by using the past), his personal life (which he is writing at the moment) merges with his studies.
M. Zinn gives two examples of his own subjectivity interfering with his work as a historian :
- As a former worker of the naval industry, he has developed what he calls a conscience de classe, which can be considered as an unusual trait for an American.
- M. Zinn also evokes his reading of the classic socialist literature, from Jack London to Karl Marx.

2. Another fact is, although the USA have the pretention to affirm their nation is one big family sharing common interests (national, defense, solidarity), M. Zinn does nto share this idea at all.

3. Hence, this intervention is based on two historical tracks :
1. An objective look at history.
2. M. Zinn's personal history.

It should be noted M. Zinn served as bombardier in Europe during WW2. He very clearly remembers dropping what was to become napalm on a French town, on the Atlantic coast. At the time, he felt this was a 'good'1 war he was fighting in. Later, when teaching, a student mentioned in his essay to M. Zinn wars could be like wines : depending on the years, they can be good or bad.

4. Once decided the war is 'good', every act commited in its context is made morally acceptable. War hence corrupts all of its actors. It may solve problems... for some short period. It may overthrow dictators (from Mussolini to Hitler), but it will not make dictatures vanish. Did fascism disappear from Europe after WW2 ?

5. Letter from General Marshall to 16 million American soldiers after WW2 : « We will now live in a better and more peaceful world. » Was it really the case ? Only to mention a few of the wars fought by the USA after WW2 :

Country Reason
Korea / Vietnam Counter-expansionism
Panama Drug traffic
Gulf I Illegal aggression
Gulf II WMD, dictatorial state

6. War is a victory, but a short, non-fundamental one. It is the tool of nation-states involved in solving problems for a short period of time.

7. War can even be considered as a conflict orientated by a class interest (and not by national interest). War may always have a fixed, known aim, its consequence are never known and its issue always uncertain.

8. Nevertheless, M. Zinn is not a pacifist, in the sense pacifism is an extreme position (total refusal of a means : war). War should be used only to stop an even more horrible process : genocides2.

9. The US government may use the genocide pretext to legitimate war, it also uses the nuclear threat to achieve war. But nuclear countries are more numerous than simply Iraq and the US : Israel has 200 nuclear heads. Iraq may have violated some treaties, so has the US, as far as nuclear weaponry is conzcerned.
The US may be fighting a tyranny today, it has also supported tyrannies by the past. During WW2, the cash & carry system first benefitted to all countries before concerning Allies only. Dictatures were supported in Guatemala, in Congo, Salvador, Chile.
On the other had, the US also overthrew democracies : Guatemala (1974), Chile (1973). Skepticism nowadays is somewhat logical, when history shows so much injustice.

10. War was designed to increase national power, and the US have used it this way, on their continent and outside it. The desire for power and its further expansion started as soon as the Independence war ended, with the expansion towards the West. The Indian slaughters (1830s) are an early example of ethnic purification, to that extent (deportation, massive killings...).

11. XIXth century : the move from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific one is taught as a triumphant, glorious part of American history, as if this move was natural and obvious. Violence in this migration is not always apparent.
12. 1846 : the US provoke war against Mexico and gain Nevada, Utah, California... Paradoxically, Mexicans are now forbidden to access land (California) that once was their own.

13. 1898 : 3 months of war in Cuba. Even if described as a liberation war, the conflict can also be viewed under the following angle : the Cuban war (known as the hispanic-american war) aimed at throttling the emerging Black Republic in Cuba, which would have been the second Black Republic (after Haiti) in the occidental sphere of influence.

14. Philippines : this time, the war is said 'divine'. The « white's man burden » is evoked : the war aims at christianizing the Philippines. However the war will be long and bloody. It features all the elements of a classic imperial war, such as testing new weapons on a popultion considered as primitive.

15. XXth century examples : Cuba, Nicaragua, Haïti (1907)...
After WW2, the US are the world's greatest power. Their influence has spread and infiltrated European states. FDR (Franklin Delano Rooselvelt) signs the first treaties with Arabia : oil will be exchanged against weapons, although it is a known fact Arabia is a repressive country at the time.

16. The task of dominating the world becomes a compulsory task in front of the USSR. However, US troops were already scattered through the world before the USSR turned into a world threat. Containment could be an excuse, to a certain extent, an excuse to legitimate the war and its budget.

17. It is, as it was already said, legitimate to doubt about the US anti-terrorist policies. Since Reagan (1980 : Grenade), up to Afghanistan, this policiy has known many flaws. In Iraq, war may be followed by military or economic (oil trade) occupation, as it has been by the past.

18. In brief, whatever justifies interventions, the true reason which has stimulated all countries since the beginning of the XXth century has been the accumulation of power, which is regrettable in all ways.


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Questions (selection)

19. Q : Is Bush winning the next elections ?
A : M. Zinn was very honored somebody could think he knew the answer to that (let me add stupid here) question. His personal opinion is that people will get tired of the Bush policy one day, and this could be before next elections.

20. Q : What can stimulate war ?
A : [Francis Feeley] Military power has many appealing traits : war is optimistic, war is vigorous. Winners lose in the end, however, as Napoleon in Russia.

21. Q : What about the Labour party ? the Labout Movement Against War (5 million syndicated peopl) ?
A : Not answered.

22. Q : What is the sense of privatization and of the trend towards slavery ?
23. A : Privatization havock (WTO, IMF) are witnesses of the operating capitalist process.

24. Q : What about education in the US ?
A : Nationalist, ignoring working class facts. Eg : Columbus.

25. Q : Is freelance capitalism this global solution we desperately need ? You have read Marx. So ?
A : Not answered.
1 Understand the term 'good' as 'fair' (comparison possible with Michael Walzer).
2 It was mentioned, during questions time, that some African wars such as Rwanda and Somalia were aiming at this, although not mentioned in M. Zinn's intervention.


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US military interventions : a historical perspective - by Howard Zinn
05/05/2003 - Grenoble, France - Notes by François Briatte


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Notes:
1- See Michael Walzer.
2- Somalia, Rwanda.