Peace Bomb

Howard Zinn's latest essay is a peace bomb dropped on the heart of Wingnutistan.

Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United States," argues convincingly that "massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out." As primary evidence he cites the U.S.'s lost war in Iraq and Israel's failure in its latest invasion of Lebanon. He also mentions the U.S.S.R.'s unsuccessful attempt to conquer Afghanistan.

In a tightly argued piece which shows remarkable emotional restraint, Zinn also demolishes the false distinction between war and terrorism, because "(W)ar in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism."

Zinn points out that "If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a 'suspected terrorist' is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is 'inevitable.'

"So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism."

What Zinn doesn't mention is that imperialist countries can still succeed in getting what they want, just not through wars and invasions, which create the resistance necessary to defeat them. But the U.S. successfully undermined leftist movements in Central America in the 80's mainly by using proxy armies, paid for and armed by us, and Henry Kissinger was able to destroy the socialist government of Chile in the 70's, replacing it with the fascist regime of August Pinochet, through C.I.A. subterfuge using dissatisfied and "Judas Iscariot" elements in Chilean society and its military.

So, as Zinn doesn't pont out, imperialism is not dead, but imperialistic warfare might as well be. It just doesn't work like it used to.

However, it is fun to watch people like Bush and Rumsfeld shoot their own feet off.