The politics of war - Howard Zinn, history professor - Interview

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1993 by Jack McEnany

On the second anniversory of the Persian Gulf crisis, we consider the specter of imperialism that haunts our democracy

JACK McENANY: Professor Zinn, recurrent in your book, A People's History of the United States, are examples of working, class America fighting wars that it had no personal stake in. Was this true of the Gulf War?

HOWARD ZINN: Oh, yes, the Gulf War fits that pattern. War seldom, if ever, has a particular or personal stake in it for the people who do the fighting - the working classes. In fact, most soldiers' only stake in war is that their lives are in danger and they will be the ones who suffer the casualties. It's an old story and, unfortunately, it takes a while for the people who are the victims of war to catch on to it. Sometimes there is an immediate reaction; sometimes there's a delayed reaction.

If we go way back prior to independence - while the country was under English rule - the American colonists were expected to fight in wars that the British government was fighting with France. There were a number of these in the early and middle eighteenth century. But the colonists rebelled against conscription; they rebelled and attacked the people who were enlisting them forcibly in the wars.

When the American Revolution took place, most Americans might think, well, at last here's a war for a good purpose, a war in which the colonists could enlist thinking that this war is for them. But, in fact, there was an enormous amount of disaffection from the Revolutionary War. It was estimated by John Adams - who was a supporter of the war - that one-third of the population was against the war, one-third supported the war, and one-third was on the fence. And there were a number of instances of rebellion against the war. George Washington had to send troops down south because people in the Carolinas and Virginia were refusing to enlist and fight in the Revolutionary Army. He sent General Nathaniel Greene down there to - to put it crudely - kill a number of people in order to impress upon them that they had to fight in this war.

In New England, people protested the drafting of citizens for the Revolutionary War as some, thing that hit the working classes hardest. People with money could buy their way out. A lot of people know this about the Civil War - this business of rich people buying their way out of the draft, buying substitutes - but it happened during the Revolutionary War as well.

In the War of 1812, the government did not dare put a conscription act into effect because it knew there would be tremendous resistance to it. The War of 1812 was basically an expansionist war - to try to move into Canada, to try to move into western lands controlled by the English.

In the Mexican War (1846 to 1848), there was open desertion on the way to Mexico City. General Scott's troops rebelled; seven regiments, virtually half his entire force, simply scattered and went home. The soldiers who didn't desert returned home after the war embittered by their casualties and by the fact that they didn't know what in the world we were fighting Mexico for. The soldiers who returned to Massachusetts went to a welcome-home dinner-you might say a "yellow-ribbon dinner," but in 1848. At this dinner, the surviving Massachusetts volunteers - half of them had been killed - booed their commanding officer at their own welcome-home party to express how they felt about the war.

In the Civil War, the poor people of New York did not see it as a war against slavery. They saw only that they were being conscripted to fight and die in a very gruesome war. They saw that the rich - the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Astors - could buy their way out for $300. And, as so often working-class whites will do, they took out their resentment on black people. The draft riots of 1863 in New York were some of the most violent internal uprisings we've had in this country, and they-were directed against black people - the innocent victims of a violent outrage against a civil war that the white working class of New York saw as just dooming them for no reason.

In the Spanish-American War, there was some early enthusiasm from a buildup of propaganda. It was seen as a war to save Cuba from Spain, a humanitarian war, a just war - all of that. Fortunately for the United States government, the war ended quickly. But although there were very few battle casual, ties, there were thousands of other casualties. Soldiers were poisoned by beef sold to the army by the big meat-packing companies of Chicago - Swift and Armour. Imagine: thousands of dead soldiers as a result of poisoned beef, but only a few hundred battle casualties. It was a very quick war - a three-month war - with no chance for resentment to build up. But when the war was extended to the Philippines, then some resentment began to appear - especially among the black troops stationed there, who saw that they were fighting against dark-skinned Filipinos who simply wanted to run their own country.

In World War I, there was a very strong anti-war movement which the government had to suppress forcibly by sending people to jail. The U.S. government prosecuted 2,000 people with laws passed by Congress to prevent criticism of the war. It destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical trade union that was against the war, and sent its top leadership to jail. The government also destroyed the Socialist Party, sent its leadership to jail, and expelled socialists from state legislatures to which they had been legally elected. There was a real campaign of oppression and propaganda to persuade people to fight the war - to accept the war - which was not quite successful. When the war was over, tremendous disillusionment and anger set in.