Howard Zinn talks about the uses of history

Democracy Now broadcast a thoughtful lecture by the historian Howard Zinn on "The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism." Prof. Zinn wrote the classic "A People's History of the United States," required reading for any person who wishes to understand America.

Among other things, Zinn argues that, "If the American people really knew history, if they learned history, if the educational institutions did their job, if the press did its job in giving people historical perspective," then they would understand when they are being lied to by their government and, presumably, do something about it.

This pretty much lets us off the hook. The American failure is institutional. Blame the schools. Blame the press. It's not our fault.

What is our responsibility -- yours and mine -- for the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan? Whether or not the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Time mag, et al, fell down on the job, there were plenty of sources, even at the earliest stage of the "War on Terror," from which to learn the truth. The blinkered "I didn't know" defense quite rightly didn't work for the Germans, and it doesn't justify the complacency or explain away the ignorance of Americans.

You can't really blame the schools, whose reading lists have helped to make "A People's History of the United States" a publishing phenomenon. And if Hermann Goering, the proto-Republican operative, was right, all the blame can't be laid at the feet of the press, either; it has to be shared by the better than eighty percent of Americans who raised a mighty cheer when it was proposed to payback the incineration of innocent Americans at the World Trade Center by blowing to smithereens superior numbers of innocent Afghanis.

If the "I didn't know" excuse won't fly on Afghanistan, think how many fewer grounds there are for clinging to it on Iraq. We knew -- you knew -- where we were headed in the aftermath of 911. The people's representatives who cravenly voted for war -- and who will now advance the cause of peace by legislating huge increases in military spending -- knew. And many in the criminal enterprise that is our current government also knew, even as they cynically retailed the WMDs.

The first worthies interviewed on 60 Minutes the Sunday after the recent election were not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or Charles Schumer or Rahm Emanuel or Howard Dean. Not Sherrod Brown or John Tester or Amy Klobuchar or Jim Webb or Bob Casey or Ben Cardin or Sheldon Whitehouse.

No, the first politicians to come before NBC's mics were John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, the two strongest proponents of peace through war. If that doesn't give you some idea that the fix is in, your obtuseness is willful; you don't want to know.

But a year from now, when the troops are still dying and Iraq is mired deeper in civil war, or two years from now when Hilary Clinton or some other Democrat holds out bloody hands in a plea for your vote, you will not be able claim you didn't know.

It was already clear, before the dust kicked up by 2006 election had time to settle, that the corporate elite is not prepared to give up the empire.

You know what is coming.

More war.

More bloodshed.

In our name.

If we do nothing, let's at least be honest, and admit that we knew.

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Howard Zinn
Democracy Now
A People's History of the United States