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.
