Type of Content: Articles and Essays

By Howard Zinn. Article. The Progressive. March 2005.
"As I write this, the day after the inauguration, the banner headline in The New York Times reads: BUSH, AT 2ND INAUGURAL, SAYS SPREAD OF LIBERTY IS THE 'CALLING OF OUR TIME.' Two days earlier, on an inside page of the Times, was a photo of a little girl, crouching, covered with blood, weeping. The caption read: "An Iraqi girl screamed yesterday after her parents were killed when American soldiers fired on their car when it failed to stop, despite warning shots, in Tal Afar, Iraq. The military is investigating the incident."

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. January 2005.
"In the days after the election, it seemed that all my friends were either depressed or angry, frustrated or indignant, or simply disgusted. Neighbors who had never said more than hi to me stopped me on the street and delivered passionate little speeches that made me think they had just listened to a re-broadcast of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, in which powerful creatures arrive on Earth to take it over."

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. November 2004.
"I'm calling it 'our' war on terrorism because I want to distinguish it from Bush's war on terrorism, and from Sharon's, and from Putin's. What their wars have in common is that they are based on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries that you can deal with terrorism by war. ...Since war is itself the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory. Is it strange, or normal, that no major political figure has pointed this out?"

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. August 2004.
"As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be 'War Stories.' I told him that I would come, but not to tell 'war stories,' rather to talk about World War II and its meaning for us today."

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. June 2004.
"It seems very hard for some people—especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places—to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on 'suspicion.' …any discussion of "What do we do now?" must start with the understanding that the present U.S. military occupation is morally unacceptable."

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. June 2004.
"Our government has declared a military victory in Iraq. As a patriot, I will not celebrate. I will mourn the dead — the American GIs, and also the Iraqi dead, of whom there have been many, many more. I will mourn the Iraqi children, not just those who are dead, but those who have been blinded, crippled, disfigured, or traumatized. We have not been given in the American media (we would need to read the foreign press) a full picture of the human suffering caused by our bombing. As a patriot, contemplating the dead GIs, I could comfort myself (as, understandably, their families do) with the thought: 'They died for their country.' But I would be lying to myself."

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. May 2004.
"The Progressive has been a thorn in the side of the establishment for almost a hundred years. Its life span covers two world wars and six smaller wars. It saw the fake prosperity of the Twenties and the tumult of the Thirties. Its voice remained alive through the Cold War and the hysteria over communism. Through all that, down to the present day, and the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, this intrepid magazine has been part of the long struggle for peace, for a boundary-less world. It may be useful to recall some of the heroes — some famous, some obscure — of that historic resistance to war."