I completely agree with this article 100%

also, Zinn has a new book out called "Original Zinn"... full of interviews with the co-author...great stuff, check it out!

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...r_terr orism/

War Is Not a Solution for Terrorism
By Howard Zinn
The Boston Globe

Saturday 02 September 2006

There is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.

The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel; indeed it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups.

I remember John Hersey's novel, "The War Lover," in which a macho American pilot, who loves to drop bombs on people and also to boast about his sexual conquests, turns out to be impotent. President Bush, strutting in his flight jacket on an aircraft carrier and announcing victory in Iraq, has turned out to be much like the Hersey character, his words equally boastful, his military machine impotent.

The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations - the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan - and were forced to withdraw.

Even the "victories" of great military powers turn out to be elusive. Presumably, after attacking and invading Afghanistan, the president was able to declare that the Taliban were defeated. But more than four years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country.

The two most powerful nations after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, with all their military might, have not been able to control events in countries that they considered to be in their sphere of influence - the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in Latin America.

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.

The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.

This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. 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.

For instance, more than a million civilians in Vietnam were killed by US bombs, presumably by "accident." Add up all the terrorist attacks throughout the world in the 20th century and they do not equal that awful toll.

If reacting to terrorist attacks by war is inevitably immoral, then we must look for ways other than war to end terrorism, including the terrorism of war. And if military retaliation for terrorism is not only immoral but futile, then political leaders, however cold-blooded their calculations, may have to reconsider their policies.

While I don't agree with Zinn's moral equivalency arguments, it's hard to dispute the ineffectiveness of a "war" on terror.

Sounds about right to me.



I liked this part in particular. More people need to realize this so more people become averse to supporting war.

for my own curiosity, may I ask what you dont agree with?

I don't place war against an outlaw insurgency, especially one that uses terrorist tactics targeted on civilians, on the same moral level as those terrorist tactics targeted on civilians, even if the result is the same: many dead innocent civilians.

I don't subscribe to "the ends justify the means" as a philosophy in general, and I consider Zinn's "the ends IMPLICATE the means" argument to be the moral equivalent of "the ends justify the means". I focus on INTENT as the moral litmus test, and while I agree that "war" is no way to fight terrorism, I don't consider war TO BE terrorism, as Zinn does. It all depends on the intent of the actors.

"Shock and awe", yeah that's not too far off from terrorism. But a targeted strike with the intent of killing an identified combatant target, which happens to result in "inevitable" casualties because the combatant is hiding himself among innocent civilians, is not the moral equivalent of blowing up a couple dozen people on a breadline with the purpose of scaring the population or inciting them to civil disorder.

Obviously, there are a LOT of questions about how the US and Israel and other legitimate armies around the world CHOOSE their targets, and how they could do a better job of minimizing inevitable casualties, or even to defeat their enemies in completely differnet manners that don't involve military strikes. I fully support seeking alternative means of resolving these conflicts, and I don't laud the actions of such militaries against targets that will inevitably result in civilian casualties. At the same time, I don't make an utterly simplistic moral homology based solely on the similar bad result of death of innocent people.

It was an interesting article, but I have to agree with PD on this one.

This surely sounds better in abstract than it does in reality.

Thanks.

war is not terrorism. least not in the abstract sense. the united states just doesnt dive planes into countries for some contrived slight.

what people do not understand is that turning the other cheek does not always work. sometimes you have to punch the fucker in the face and bloody his nose

dive bombs into hospitals and innocent people?

if you think the US purposely kills innocents, and doesnt go out of their way to make sure they dont, then youre a lost cause

but that really matters?

action - reaction

if youre killing innocent people, if you cant find the damn weapons of mass destruction, that was the reason for you to get in the country, is it really worthy?

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich. ...'


the only difference is the amount of resources one has to wage a war.

Zinn had me until he concluded that "war is also terrorism." This is simply not an absolute. Has the U.S. conducted wars that weren't right in the first place, resulting in innocents killed? Yes, and they were morally wrong, in my opinion.

Was the response to 9/11 in Afghanistan wrong? No. Was our response to Pearl Harbor wrong? No.

Terrorism of the rich? Please. Yeah, our country was rolling in cash when we joined WW2.

I won't rehash the many great points that have been made against Zinn's assertions.
But I will add this - Mr. Zinn is very adept at analyzing war, terrorism and the recent pursuits of the United States and Israel. Unfortunately, the article's conclusion is open-ended -

"If reacting to terrorist attacks by war is inevitably immoral, then we must look for ways other than war to end terrorism, including the terrorism of war. And if military retaliation for terrorism is not only immoral but futile, then political leaders, however cold-blooded their calculations, may have to reconsider their policies."

I don't refute his claim that warfare is not the only answer. Personally, I believe it is a combination of warfare (against state-sponsors of terrorism) and "police work." But if we are to rule out military operations altogether, then I would ask Mr. Zinn this - what do we do? How is Israel supposed to handle the problem if not through military action? It seems to escape Mr. Zinn that Israel has made great concessions in the past few years in the interest of reaching a peaceful solution and what did it get.....kidnappings and rockets launched at its civilian population. So what to do, Mr. Zinn?

This could work if your enemy was discrete and visible.

and therein lies the problem, bin laden and his organization do not have a face (country) that we can punch. instead they hit and run and never stay in the same place for long. then they use innocent civillians as sheilds. the war on terror is a no win situation, but it is a situation that must be dealt with

I totally agree with this.



I'm not sure I can agree with this. It's a no-win situation only if you've resolved that swinging your arms wildly when blindfolded is the solution.

There are other ways to win this "war".

What you and punkdavid are saying is that is morally justified to slaughter innocent civilians in another country in order to save the lives of those in your own.

If there was an extremely skewed balance between the number killed and the number saved, say ten thousand saved with for each child murdered, it could be ethically debatable to some degree, but even then: what is the threshold? When does the amount you have to kill become too high?