By Howard Zinn • The Progressive • November 2002
I was an eager bombardier in the Air Force during World War II. I served in “the best of wars,” the war that killed the most people, but for good purpose. This war had wonderful motives, at least on the part of some people, but ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was interspersed with other atrocities committed by the good guys against the bad guys. I, being one of the good guys, felt very proud that I was on the good side, and that if atrocities were to be committed, they were to be committed by good guys.
Now the Bush administration wants to take the nation into war against Iraq. It says we’re the good guys again. And Bush administration officials think if they use that phrase “weapons of mass destruction” again and again and again that people will cower, cower, cower.
