Howard Zinn: Memo to Obama, McCain ... No one wins in a war
[Howard Zinn is author of 'A People's History of the United States.]
BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we 'win' and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and 'win' in Afghanistan.
For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad?
Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one 'wins' in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?
Did we 'win' by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate, leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
Did we 'win' in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers dead.
Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set the stage for another war.
In Afghanistan, the United States declared 'victory' over the Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will produce 'victory'? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?...
Read entire article at Boston Globe
BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we 'win' and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and 'win' in Afghanistan.
For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad?
Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one 'wins' in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?
Did we 'win' by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate, leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
Did we 'win' in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers dead.
Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set the stage for another war.
In Afghanistan, the United States declared 'victory' over the Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will produce 'victory'? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?...