Why War Fails
By
Howard Zinn *
10/23/06 " The Progressive" -- - - I
suggest there is something important to be learned from the recent experience of
the United States and "Israel" in the Middle East: that massive military attacks
are not only morally reprehensible but useless in achieving the stated aims of
those who carry them out.
In the three years of the Iraq War, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment
and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, the United States has failed
utterly in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq.
American soldiers and civilians, fearful of going into the neighborhoods of
Baghdad, are huddled inside the Green Zone, where the largest embassy in
the world is being built, covering 104 acres and closed off from the world
outside its walls.
I remember John Hersey's novel The War Lover, in which a macho American pilot,
who loves to drop bombs on people, and also to boast about his sexual conquests,
turns out to be impotent. George Bush, strutting in his flight jacket on an
aircraft carrier, and announcing victory in Iraq, has turned out to be an
embodiment of the Hersey character, his words equally boastful, his military
machine equally impotent.
The "Israeli" invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to
"Israel". Indeed, it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in
Hezbollah or Hamas, or among Arabs who belong to neither of those
groups.
That failure of massive force goes so deep into history that "Israeli" leaders
must have been extraordinarily obtuse, or blindly fanatic, to miss it. The
memory is not lost to Professor Ze'ev Maoz at Tel Aviv University,
writing recently in the "Israeli" newspaper Ha'aretz about a previous
"Israeli" invasion of Lebanon: "Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed
between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate." The
result, aside from the physical and human devastation, was the rise of
Hezbollah, whose rockets provoked another desperate exercise of massive
force.
The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of
large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their
enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak
nations. Even though the United States dropped more bombs in the Vietnam War
than in all of World War II, it was still forced to withdraw. The Soviet Union,
trying for a decade to conquer Afghanistan, in a war that caused a million
deaths, became bogged down and also finally withdrew.
Even the supposed triumphs of great military powers turn out to be elusive.
After attacking and invading Afghanistan, President Bush boasted that the
Taliban were defeated. But five years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence,
and the Taliban are active in much of the country. Last May, there were riots in
Kabul, after a runaway American military truck killed five Afghans. When U.S.
soldiers fired into the crowd, four more people were killed.
After the brief, apparently victorious war against Iraq in 1991, George Bush Sr.
declared (in a moment of rare eloquence): "The specter of Vietnam has been
buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula." Those sands are
bloody once more.
The same George Bush presided over the military attack on Panama in 1989, which
killed thousands and destroyed entire neighborhoods, justified by the "war on
drugs." Another victory, but in a few years, the drug trade in Panama was
thriving as before.
The nations of Eastern Europe, despite Soviet occupation, developed resistance
movements that eventually compelled the Soviet military to leave. The United
States, which had its way in Latin America for a hundred years, has been unable,
despite a long history of military interventions, to control events in Cuba, or
Venezuela, or Brazil, or Bolivia.
Overwhelming "Israeli" military power, while occupying the West Bank and Gaza,
has not been able to stop the resistance movement of Palestinians. "Israel" has
not made itself more secure by its continued use of massive force. The United
States, despite two successive wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not more
secure.
More important than the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important,
is the fact that war in our time always results in the indiscriminate killing of
large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a
"war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms.
The repeated excuse for war, and its toll on civilians-and this has been uttered
by Pentagon spokespersons as well as by "Israeli" officials-is that terrorists
hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in
Lebanon) is "accidental" whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (9/11,
Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.
This is a false distinction. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a
vehicle on the ground that a "suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent
use of the word "suspected" as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets),
it is argued that the resulting deaths of women and children is not intended,
therefore "accidental." The deaths of innocent people in bombing may not be
intentional. Neither are they accidental. The proper description is
"inevitable."
So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a
"deliberate" attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of
people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far greater than all the
deaths of innocent people deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reconsider
the morality of war, any war in our time.
It is a supreme irony that the "war on terrorism" has brought a higher death
toll among innocent civilians than the hijackings of 9/11, which killed up to
3,000 people. The United States reacted to 9/11 by invading and bombing
Afghanistan. In that operation, at least 3,000 civilians were killed, and
hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes and villages, terrorized
by what was supposed to be a war on terror. Bush's Iraq War, which he keeps
linking to the "war on terror," has killed between 40,000 and 140,000 civilians.
More than a million civilians in Vietnam were killed by U.S. bombs, presumably
by "accident." Add up all the terrorist attacks throughout the world in the
twentieth century and they do not equal that awful toll.
If reacting to terrorist attacks by war is inevitably immoral, then we must look
for ways other than war to end terrorism.
And if military retaliation for terrorism is not only immoral but futile, then
political leaders, however cold-blooded their calculations, must reconsider
their policies. When such practical considerations are joined to a rising
popular revulsion against war, perhaps the long era of mass murder may be
brought to an end.
* Howard Zinn, author of
A People's History of the United State.