Articles and Essays Archives - Page 13 of 15

The Toll of War

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. August 2002.
"Democracy flies out the window as soon as war comes along. So when officials in Washington talk about democracy, either here or abroad, as they take this country to war, they don't mean it. They don't want democracy; they want to run things themselves. They want to decide whether we go to war. They want to decide the lives and deaths of people in this country, and they certainly want to decide the lives and deaths of people in Iraq and all over the Middle East. Faced with this attitude, our job is just a simple one: to stop them."

A Break-in for Peace

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. July 2002.
"In the film Ocean's 11, eleven skillful crooks embark on an ingenious plan, meticulously worked out, to break into an impossibly secure vault and make off with more than $100 million in Las Vegas casino loot. Hardly a crime of passion.... No, money was the motive, with as little moral fervor attending the crime as went into the making of the movie, which had the same motive. I was reminded of this recently when I sat in a courtroom in Camden, New Jersey, and participated in the recollection of another break-in, carried out by the Camden 28, where the motive was to protest the war in Vietnam."

Operation Enduring War

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. March 2002.
"We are 'winning the war on terror.' I learn this from George Bush's State of the Union Address. 'Our progress," he said, 'is a tribute to the might of the United States military.' My hometown newspaper, The Boston Globe, is congratulatory: 'On the war front, the Administration has much to take pride in.' But the president also tells us that 'tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large.' That hardly suggests we are 'winning the war.'"

The Others

By Howard Zinn. Article. The Nation. February 2, 2002.
Every day for several months, the New York Times did what should always be done when a tragedy is summed up in a statistic: It gave us miniature portraits of the human beings who died on September 11 — their names, photos, glimmers of their personalities, their idiosyncrasies, how friends and loved ones remember them. I was deeply moved, reading those intimate sketches—"A Poet of Bensonhurst...A Friend, A Sister...Someone to Lean On...Laughter, Win or Lose..." I thought: Those who celebrated the grisly deaths of the people in the twin towers and the Pentagon as a blow to symbols of American dominance in the world—what if, instead of symbols, they could see, up close, the faces of those who lost their lives?

The Old Way of Thinking

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. September 2001. Also published as "Violence Doesn't Work" At IndyMedia and Common Dreams.
"The images on television have been heartbreaking. ...We knew that there must be thousands of human beings buried alive, but soon dead under a mountain of debris. We can only imagine the terror among the passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash, the fire, the end. Those scenes horrified and sickened me. Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment."

The Greatest Generation?

Article by Howard Zinn. The Progressive. August 2001.
"They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War II, and we (I almost said 'I') won the war against fascism. ...That idea is perpetuated by an artillery barrage of books and films about World War II.. ...I wrote from my air base in England to my friend Joe Perry, who was flying B-24s out of Italy, kidding him about his big clunk of a plane, but the humor was extinguished when my last letter to him came back with the notation 'Deceased.'"

McVeigh’s Path to the Death Chamber

By Howard Zinn. Article. Boston Globe. June 16, 2001.
Now that Timothy McVeigh has been put to death, and some people's need for revenge or punishment may be satisfied, we can begin to think calmly of how he learned his twisted sense of right and wrong from the government that executed him.

Tennis on the Titanic

Article by Howard Zinn. ZCommunications. December 16, 2000. The Progressive as "Disputed Elections, Concealed Facts," February 2001.
"As the prize of the presidency lurched wildly back and forth in the last days of the year, with the entire nation hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vision. I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while passengers and crew were totally concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck."

A Campaign Without Class

Article by Howard Zinn. ZCommunications, September 29, 2000 and The Progressive, November 2000.
"There came a rare amusing moment in this election campaign when George Bush (who has $220 million dollars for his campaign) accused Al Gore (who has only $170 million dollars) of appealing to 'class warfare'.… I noticed that neither of the accused responded with a defiant 'Yes, we have classes in this country.' Only Ralph Nader has dared to suggest that this country is divided among the rich, the poor, and the nervous in between. This kind of talk is unpardonably rude, and would be enough to bar him from the televised debates."

Howard Zinn’s Review of Karl Marx: A Life

By Howard Zinn. Article - Review. In These Times. September 2000.
It takes some courage to write still another biography of Karl Marx, especially if the writer has dared to go through the 40 volumes of his writings and his correspondence. Francis Wheen seems to have done that research scrupulously, open to both colorful stories and thunderous ideas.

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Type of Content: Articles and Essays

The Toll of War

A Break-in for Peace

Operation Enduring War

The Others

The Old Way of Thinking

The Greatest Generation?

McVeigh’s Path to the Death Chamber

Tennis on the Titanic

A Campaign Without Class

Howard Zinn’s Review of Karl Marx: A Life

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