[MUSIC PLAYING] SANYAL: Welcome to the
opening lecture of the series Myths About America. This lecture series
has been organized by MIT's Special Program for
Urban and Regional Studies-- in short, SPURS. SPURS is institutionally located
in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. I'm Bish Sanyal,
director of SPURS, and it is an honor for me
to welcome Professor Howard Zinn, the speaker this evening. I also want to welcome all of
you, the fellows, the students, faculty, and staff. Perhaps there are others
in the audience who do not fit any of
these categories, but are eager nonetheless
to participate in our deliberations
on myths about America. A welcome to you all. Let me provide a very
brief description of SPURS, the program which is
hosting this lecture series. For some of you
who may not know, SPURS was created in 1967, a
critical historical moment, much like the time
we are living now. And it just created for
MIT career professionals from around the world who
wanted to spend a year at MIT reflecting on their
work experience in a setting very different
from their work environment, and one which provided
opportunities for reflection and learning. Now, a majority of the
fellows in the program are supported by the
Fulbright Exchange Program for practitioners, named
after the late senator, Hubert Humphrey. One key objective
of this program is to cultivate international
understanding of the US by other nations in Asia,
Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. As you well know, the need
for such an understanding is more important
now than ever before. The selection of the team and
the speakers for this year's lecture series was made with
this particular objective in mind. We assumed that most
international fellows and students come to the US with
certain preconceived opinions and perceptions regarding
American society, politics, and economy. The goal of this
lecture series is to subject such perceptions
to critical scrutiny, drawing on historical evidence. We hope that such scrutiny
of both negative and positive myths about America, as
held by others, and also by Americans themselves,
will help the fellows better understand this nation. A few individuals
and institutions deserve thanks for the
organization of this lecture series. First, the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning at MIT, which is currently Professor
Larry Vale, who I see is in the audience. [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE],,
without whose help we could not have organized this
lecture series. And finally, I want to
thank the fellows themselves for their intellectual
curiosity and eagerness to better understand the US. We are honored that this process
of critical understanding is to be started with a lecture
by Professor Howard Zinn, who does not need much
of an introduction. A People's History
of the United States, which Professor Zinn
published in 1980, is a book that has inspired many
who could, for the first time, see their own contributions
to the nation's historical evolution thanks to
this new history from below. But Howard Zinn is not a
person whose experience is confined to
non-traditional social groups at the bottom of
American society. He's a decorated war veteran who
flew bombing missions in Europe during World War II,
returned from the war and attended New York
University on the GI Bill, and then went on to attend
Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree
and PhD in political science. Later, he became the chair
of history and social science at Spelman College in Atlanta,
a college for black women, where he became deeply involved
in civil rights movements. Howard Zinn's
understanding of the US is based as much on such
concrete firsthand experience as on academic studies
of historical events. The combination of these
two sources of knowledge has cultivated a mind
which is at once sharply analytical, deeply
empathetic, and patriotic too, in a way in which is
necessary for our times. So with much admiration,
I present to you the opening speaker of our
lecture series, Professor Howard Zinn, will
speak this evening on the topic of the myth
of American exceptionalism. Professor Zinn will
speak for an hour-- or 45 minutes to an hour-- at the end of which he will have
an exchange of views with you. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] ZINN: Thank you,
Professor Sanyal, for that nice introduction. Can you all hear me? And also for inviting me. Not everybody invites me. And sometimes I have
to go places uninvited. But it's good too good
to be here at MIT. Are any of you back there
having trouble hearing me? No? One person? Okay. American exceptionalism--
the myth of American exceptionalism-- and by the way, when I
told a friend of mine that I was going to give a talk
on American exceptionalism, she immediately got
in touch with somebody who had been a
student of hers, and I think who is now
teaching, and who sent me a paper on
American exceptionalism. But I will not read
her paper, although she has some interesting good
and useful things to say. And one of the
points she makes is that, by American
exceptionalism, we don't mean that the United
States is simply unique, simply different. All countries are unique. All countries are different. Exceptionalism suggests
more than that. It suggests superiority. It suggests something that
all of us living in the United States have encountered
a lot, and that is self-congratulation. We are fond in the United States
of congratulating ourselves for how wonderful we are
and how we are the best, we are the greatest,
we are the strongest, we are the most prosperous,
we are the freest, we are the most democratic. And yes, we are number one. And we are, in fact,
number one in many things. And we are very good-- really, very good--
in many things. And those are the
things I probably don't have to tell you about, because
anybody who is in the United States, even for a
short time, knows, because the things that the
United States is good about are immediately apparent. But that's not enough. That doesn't tell
the whole story. And if we only
dwell on what we all acknowledge are some of
the remarkable things about the United
States, we will be missing something very
important-- something, in fact, so important that we'll be
shocked if something happens one day that arouses
us from our complacency and that makes us wonder how it
is that a country so gifted, so special, so superior,
should experience suddenly a disaster that
nobody can explain. And yes, when 9/11
happened, that was an occasion perhaps for
reflection on ourselves-- a sober and critical
reflection on ourselves. That did not happen in the
higher reaches of government. The people at the
top of the government are not given to self-reflection
or to self-criticism. No. Instead, the reaction was a
kind of hysterical reaction, a reaching out-- well, reaching is a euphemism War, violence,
attack, do something-- but no, no reflection. So I think that that
kind of examination of who we are as a
country is needed, so we won't be unguarded,
so we won't be shocked when something terrible happens-- so we will perhaps
begin to understand. This idea of self-congratulation
sometimes manifests itself this way, that if you criticize
the United States government-- a lot of people
here have probably experienced this, as
anybody who has ever uttered a word of criticism-- you're met with the exhortation. Well, why don't you
go somewhere else? Well, sometimes, they
say, why don't you go back to where you came
from, which might be Brooklyn. But it's somehow
go somewhere else. A friend of mine
who's a comedian-- I have friends of mine
who are comedians, but who don't know it-- but this is a guy who is a
comedian and who knows it, but he's also serious. Some of you maybe
have maybe even encountered him, because
he used to do comedy here in the Boston area. His name is Barry Crimmins. And in his serious comedy,
he would very often be critical of certain
things that the United States had done in the world. And people would
say to him, well, why don't you move
somewhere else? And he would say, I don't
want to move somewhere else, because I don't want
to become the victim of American foreign policy. Well, this notion of
superiority and exceptionalism starts early. And [? Sarah ?] [? Murton, ?]
who wrote this book, points out that it
starts as early as-- well, here in
Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, the colony
had just begun and the Governor Winthrop
utters those words, which centuries later,
will be repeated by Ronald Reagan, who was a
great student, as you know, of early American history. And the Winthrop talked about
the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a city on a hill. I think Reagan
embellished a little and talked about a
golden city on a hill. Well, the idea of
a city on a hill-- you probably heard that
expression a number of times-- the idea of a city on
a hill is a nice one, because it suggests a model. It suggests setting an example. Actually, it suggests
what, in fact, George Bush has spoken
of, when he said, we are a beacon of
liberty and democracy. And if that was what we were, if
that's all we are, if that's-- we're a city on a hill
that people can look to, and the people can learn
from, and people can admire, and people can emulate, that
is a wonderful thing to be. But it doesn't stop there with
just being a city on a hill. In fact, you can see it, because
just a few years after Governor Winthrop utters these words
about being a city on a hill-- just a few years later, the
people in the city on a hill move out to massacre
the Pequot Indians, who seemed to think they
belong on this land. And there's a
description of that, which was William Bradford,
one of the early settlers in Massachusetts at that time,
a contemporary of Winthrop, wrote a history of the
Plymouth Plantation. And he talks about
how Captain Mason, attacking a Pequot village,
said, "We must burn them." And then Bradford
reports, "Those that escaped the fire were
slain with a sword, some hewn to pieces, some run
through with their rapiers, as they were quickly dispatched,
and very few escaped. It was conceived that this
thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to
see them frying in the fire, and the streams of blood
quenching the same. But the victory seemed
a sweet sacrifice, and they gave prayers
thereof to God, who had wrought so
wonderfully for them and given them so
speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy." And very early on,
there's an association between what the government
does and what God approves of. And that process of not being
justice city on the hill, but of moving out, of
expanding, continued. That's a persistent
fact of American history going all the way back
to those first settlers, and coming down to
the present day-- the persistence of expansion
into somebody else's territory, and occupying that territory,
and dealing harshly with the people who
resist that occupation. And one of the
things that, when you study the American Revolution in
school, one of the things they don't tell you-- although we know about the
good things of the American Revolution-- independence
from England, and the Declaration of
Independence, and all of that-- but generally, they
skip over the fact that independence from
England for the colonists was disastrous for the Indians. Because it meant
that, from now on, the colonists, who had been
restrained by the British in their Proclamation
of 1763, setting a line, a boundary within which
the settlers were supposed to stay so as not to encroach
into Indian territory, this boundary line
was now erased. And now, the colonists-- now,
with the revolution victorious, with independence from
England, the colonists could move westward
into Indian territory. And of course, that
process continued on and on with the
kind of description that you heard of the Pequot
massacre occurring again and again in American
history, as we moved across to the west coast and down
to the Gulf of Mexico. And this notion of
God being involved, this notion of being
divinely ordained, that notion continued. In the middle of
the 19th century, on the eve of the
War with Mexico, when the United States
had just annexed Texas-- a lot of Americans don't
know that Texas was just part of Mexico. A lot of people in
the United States don't know that California
was once part of Mexico. They wonder, why do they
have all these Spanish names out there? San this, and Santa this, and-- yeah, well. But on the eve of
war with Mexico, this famous phrase was
coined by a writer and editor named John O'Sullivan. He spoke about manifest destiny. And he said, "It was
our manifest destiny to overspread the continent
allotted by providence for the free development of our
yearly multiplying millions." Providence, God, continued to
be involved in an expansion. When the United States
went into the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th
century, President McKinley-- some of you may know
this, because it's-- not everything that I say
to people is an obscure fact and sometimes I tell people
that they really know. Maybe often, I tell people
things that they really know. Sometimes I think
everything I tell people is something they really
know, but I say it anyway. But you may have heard that
McKinley said that the decision to invade the Philippines
came one night when he prayed, and God told him to
take the Philippines. And so this is a very
dangerous kind of idea. Once you have God's permission
to do what you want, you need no criterion
of human morality. And with President Bush-- if you don't mind me
skipping immediately a lot of American history
to President Bush-- and it's well
known that Bush has a special relationship to
God and that Bush invokes God every chance he gets. He's not the only president. I mustn't be too hard. He's not the only
president who does this. The invoking God is
a very common thing all through American
history, but Bush has made a specialty of it. Now, I'm going to tell
you something where I don't know if this is true. Not all historians will admit
that the things they tell you may not be true, but
it sounds true to me. How's that for scientific
bit of evidence? And that is an article appeared
in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Any of you remember
an article that appeared in the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in which
the reporter talks about talking to Palestinian
leaders who had met with Bush? Okay, finally I'm telling
you something that is not only fairly new, but dubious. But according to
this reporter, he spoke to his Palestinian leader,
and the Palestinian leader reported on his
conversation with Bush. And as he reported,
Bush told him, "God told me to strike at
al-Qaeda, and I struck them. And then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did. And now, I am determined to
solve the problem in the Middle East." Well, as I say, who knows? It's one of the situations
where you get something second and third-hand. It's just that it's
plausible, knowing Bush. Whether it's true or
not, it's plausible. It fits everything else. Now, I'll give you a piece of
evidence, which is I think, more credible. That is that it's
closer to home. This is the president of the
Ethics and Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist
Convention, a friend of Bush, and says that Bush told
him during the election campaign, quote, "I believe
God wants me to be president." Now, I would consider
that interference in a free election. And God wants me
to be president. And this actually was
reported in the newspaper. And this man,
Richard [? Lamb, ?] who says that Bush told him this
during the election campaign, he resented the fact
that it was quoted, "I believe God wants
me to be president," but it was quoted
out of context. Context was that Bush
followed this up by saying, but if that doesn't
happen, it's Okay. Well, I thought
that's reasonable. He's willing to change his mind,
if God changes his or her mind. Okay. This idea of God giving strength
to whatever the government does is something that is
true not just with Bush, but at the higher reaches
of American government, the people around the
bush, and Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia, I don't know
how closely you watch him, but-- this is an aside because I just
got this in the mail today, and that was something-- a
publication of the Dramatists Guild, in which they haven't-- they reproduce a talk
that the playwright Tony Kushner gave at Bard College,
and it's all about Scalia. But that's just an aside. Scalia seriously believes
that God is the source of governmental power. And he has said this
again and again. He spoke in-- well,
two years ago, at the University of Chicago
Divinity School, said, "Government is the
minister of God. Government derives its
moral authority from God." And this is a dangerous
idea in anybody's hands. Scalia seems to be
overlooking the fact that the Declaration
of Independence suggests that
government gets its-- gets authority-- excuse me-- from the people. Government gets its
authority from the people. It's answerable to the people. If the government
doesn't make sure that people have an equal
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, it is then the people who
have the right to, as the Declaration
of Independence says, to alter or
abolish the government. But I suppose Scalia's a
strict constitutionalist, and the Declaration
of Independence is not part of the Constitution. In fact, the Declaration
of Independence is not a legal document at all. It's just the most
idealistic statement to come out of the American
Revolution, and one to be put aside as soon
as you win the revolution. So this idea of God being a
source of governmental power, it's always dangerous
in anybody's hands. It's dangerous when people call
themselves the chosen people. It's dangerous there too. But if these people don't
have a lot of power, there's not much they
can do with that. They can enjoy the fact that
they are the chosen people. If there's some point
in history where they develop the power to do
something to somebody else, well, then it becomes serious. And we've seen that there are
people who in Israel who have-- who justify the occupation
of the West Bank on very pragmatic grounds of
security and self-defense. But there are others-- there are religious fanatics
who justify the occupation on the basis of yes,
being the chosen people, and being chosen
by God to do this. Of course, there are important
people, important Jews who have opposed this idea of
calling themselves the chosen people, considering what
terrible things have been done in the name of
being selected by God. After all, the
Nazi storm troopers had on their belts
Gott mit uns-- God with us. So it's a dangerous
concept when-- especially when the
people who believe they are structured by God
have great military power. And the Nazis, with
their military power. And with that kind
of divine ordination, we know what they did in Europe. And now, you have
the United States, and you have a
government which assures us gets its power from God. And in the hands of
the United States, this is a dangerous doctrine,
because [INAUDIBLE] simply-- because of the great
power of the United States to do whatever they
think is God's will, that is a nation with 10,000
nuclear weapons, a nation with military bases in
100 different countries with its warships on every sea. When you couple that power with
the notion of divine sanction, then the world is in danger. And this idea that the United
States should use its power in the world, should
revel in its being number one, that [INAUDIBLE]
became especially important that at the end of World War II. Because at the end
of World War II, the United States did become the
preeminent power in the world. Yes, there was a
Soviet Union, but it was the United States
that was the greatest economic and [INAUDIBLE]
atomic weapons, the greatest military
power in the world. And at the end of
World War II Henry Luce, who is of the I
guess most important nongovernmental
people, one of most powerful nongovernmental
people in the country-- the owner of a vast chain of
media enterprises, the man who owned Time,
Life, and Fortune-- not just the magazines,
but the things themselves. But Henry Luce said that this
would be the American Century. As he put it, the victory now,
at the end of World War II, gave the United States the
right to exert upon the world the full impact of our
influence for such purposes as we see fit, and by
such means as we see fit. And that idea, that
we do what we want, that this is the American
Century, that in fact, persisted, and was acted
out through the rest of the 20th century, because
the United States continued to expand. Even with the Soviet Union
there and soon acquiring its own nuclear weapons,
the United States continued to expand into-- its influence into the oil
regions of the Middle East by this special arrangement
with Saudi Arabia, into Asia with Japan, and into--
certainly into Latin America. And there were some setbacks--
the setback in Vietnam. But the Philippines remained
a very important base for the United States. And yes, and soon,
the United States had military bases
all over the world, and soldiers and sailors
stationed all over the world. And the Cold War
with the Soviet Union did not really do much
to stop this expansion. In fact, the Cold War, the
existence of the Soviet Union as a rival, the
existence of something called a communist
threat in the world gave the United
States a justification for doing so much of what
it was doing in the world-- for expanding its
power in the world, for overthrowing this
government or that government, or moving troops here
and moving troops there, and all justified
by the necessity of stopping communism. Now, you can see that-- I think-- historically,
that this was an artificial justification. And by that, I mean
that this wasn't the real reason for American
expansion in the world. The real reason for
American expansion was not to stop communism. After all, that expansion was a
continuation of expansion which had gone on for a long time. If you want to see the
limits of that idea that it was the
Soviet Union and Cold War which was the reason for
America United States expanding its power in the world,
all you have to do is ask the question, what
was going on before 1917? What was going on before there
was a Bolshevik Revolution? At that point, the
United States was just being minding its own business? No. Not long before there's
a Bolshevik Revolution, the United States was engaged
in expanding its power into the Caribbean,
into the Pacific. So what happened, of course,
is that the Cold War ended. That justification ended. But very soon after,
9/11 happened. And once 9/11 took place,
another justification appeared. Terrorism replaced communism
as a kind of simple answer to the question of,
why are we going here? Why are we going there? Why are we making war here? Why are we sending troops there? And in the '50s, it was
why are we overthrowing the government of Guatemala,
the government of Chile, or the government of Iran? Well, it's communism. And now, it's terrorism. And it has a certain
plausibility, because there was a
reality to communism, but what we did in relation that
reality went far beyond what the real threat was. There's a reality to
terrorism, but what we do in relation to
terrorism does not quite meet the requirement
of having an effect-- serious effect on terrorism. And it does suggest
that there are motives deeper than the
idea of fighting terrorism for the American
move into the Middle East in these past few years. So one year after
9/11, President Bush announces the national
security strategy. And this basically
lays out the principles for American foreign
policy, and lays out the principles of unilateralism,
and the preemption, and making sure
that no power can rival the power of the
United States in the world. And essentially,
this is a declaration that the United States
could ignore the UN Charter, because if you accept
pre-emption, then you are violating the
principle of the UN Charter that you're only supposed
to make war in self-defense. And I suggest you're also
violating the principles laid down in the Nuremberg trials,
for which then Nazi leaders were put on trial and hanged. And that is for aggressive war,
for preemptive war, [INAUDIBLE] war not in self-defense. So this is a very serious thing,
this declaration of principles and national security strategy. And we shouldn't think it was
just a Bush Republican idea. Very often, we like to think
that before Bush, things were okay and that Bush
represents a dramatic departure from whatever we had before. But in fact, preemption
is something that-- after all, the United
States has made war before, had invaded countries before-- well, as we did
in Southeast Asia, which was certainly not a
matter of defending ourselves. And the United States has done-- has made war unilaterally-- and this was before Bush-- made war unilaterally or
carried out bombing missions unilaterally. Sometimes creating a kind of
cloak of internationalism, by bringing NATO or
something or by bringing in the UN, as in
Korea, but basically an American enterprise. And in fact, under Clinton,
Madeleine Albright said at one point-- some of you may remember
this-- she said, we will-- if possible, we will act in
the world multilaterally. But if necessary, we
will act unilaterally. And Clinton was not averse
to acting unilaterally and preemptively. And what happens in the
present situation is that-- I must say this,
that very often, liberals in the United States-- people who are not for Bush-- yes, liberals in the
United States accept-- with qualifications here and
there-- but accept basically the Bush principles. And the reason
for this, I think, is that 9/11 had a very
powerful psychological effect on everybody in America. But I think there are many
people in the United States-- liberal intellectuals
who are really, I think, so affected emotionally by what
happened on 9/11 that I think it began to distort
their thinking-- I know they wouldn't
like me saying this-- distort their thinking about
what was happening in the world and about America's
role in the world. And they were sort of becoming
hysterical over terrorism. And again, yes, there's
a reality of terrorism. There's a difference between
dealing with terrorism in a intelligence and real way
and becoming hysterical over terrorism in the way
that actually liberals in the 1950s-- those of you who know some
of the history of the United States in the 1950s during
the Cold War period, during what is called the
McCarthy period, you might remember that there were
not just McCarthy people, but liberal people-- Democrats-- who
reacted hysterically to what they considered
the communist threat. To the point where
Hubert Humphrey, who was sort of a quintessential
American political liberal-- Hubert Humphrey suggested the
notion of internment camps for dangerous people
in the United States in times of crisis. And I think we're
seeing something of the same phenomenon. Because I was reading
in the liberal magazine, The American Prospect,
where the editors, in their recent issue, they-- their premise is that the
greatest immediate threat to our lives and liberties
are Islamic terrorists with global reach. And therefore, when facing
a substantial, immediate, and provable threat,
the United States has both the right
and the obligation to strike preemptively,
and if need be, unilaterally against terrorists
or states that support them. Preemptively, and if need
be, unilaterally-- well, that is the Bush doctrine. And of course, they
qualify this by saying, facing a substantial,
immediate, and provable threat. The problem is that
those who decide whether a threat is,
in fact, substantial, immediate, provable-- people who decide that will not
be the liberal intellectuals who formulated
this, but the people who run the government
of the United States. They will decide it,
just as Bush decided it when he decided to go
to war in Afghanistan, and when he decided
to go to war in Iraq. These ideas of unilateralism,
and preemption, and-- these are not new. The whole history of the
United States in the world is a history of
expansion based on these, and rationales given like
the rationales given today when we go to war,
about spreading liberty, and democracy,
and civilization. And we declared war on
Mexico in 1846, again, for the purpose of teaching
civilization to the Mexicans. And then we went
into Cuba in 1898 to bring liberty to the Cubans. In fact, there's always-- or a lot of times--
a certain measure of truth to these statements. As we did expel Spanish
domination from Cuba, we liberated the Cubans from
Spain, but not from ourselves. Because once Spain was gone,
the United States moved in, corporations moved in, the
American military moved in, Americans wrote-- rewrote
the Cuban constitution. But their rationale was we are
bringing freedom to the Cubans. And then, of course,
going into the Philippines and bringing civilization. As McKinley said, "We will
Christianize and civilize the Filipinos." Because we are
different, we are better. At the time of the invasion
of the Philippines, the American Secretary
of War, [INAUDIBLE],, said a very classical statement
of American exceptionalism. He said, "The American
soldier's different from all other soldiers
of all other countries since the world began. He is the advanced guard
of liberty and justice, of law and order, and
of peace and happiness." American soldier is different. Well, of course,
now, right now-- immediately now, in
the wake of Abu Ghraib, in the wake of all these
revelations coming out every day about torture, and
atrocities, and so on, that's-- doesn't sound right. But you might say, well,
[INAUDIBLE] could not anticipate Abu Ghraib. But he didn't have
to anticipate, because at the
time, he was saying this the United States was
already committing atrocities and massacres in the Philippines
by these American soldiers, who were different from
soldiers all over the world. The history of American
expansion in the world is not a history which is
taught very much in our schools, or even in our colleges
and universities. We have something called
diplomatic history. That's a discipline. Discipline is
diplomatic history, and that's what our
history is very often. It's diplomatic history,
and we diplomatically treat the American foreign
policy in the world. Because if young
people in our schools learned the history of United
States expansion in the world, if they learned the history
of the massacres and invasions that accompanied American
expansion in the world, they could not possibly believe
the President of the United States when he gets
up before the nation and says we're going
into this country to-- for liberty and democracy. This is Operation Enduring
Freedom, and so on. But that history is not there. And this misuse of
history is-- it continues to be perpetuated by
our political leaders, and not really
caught or criticized by that part of the American
culture which is supposed to check up on and criticize
what the government does-- that is, the press, the media. And so you have Bush
appearing, as he did a couple of years ago,
before the Philippine National Assembly and saying to
the Philippine National Assembly, the-- I don't know. He said, "America is proud of
its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together, our soldiers
liberated the Philippines from colonial rule." Well, the people in
the Philippine National Assembly sitting there-- you wonder, must have taken
a lot of self-restraint to just sit there and
listen to this-- liberated the Philippines. 600,000 or so Filipinos
died in this long war against the Filipinos. And at the end of it, when the
United States was triumphant, it did not bring liberty
to the Philippines. It brought decades and
decades and decades of military dictatorship
for the Philippines. I remember there was a point,
I don't know, about a year ago, where the Mexican
ambassador to the UN said something undiplomatic
about the United States and Mexico. He said something about how the
United States has been treating Mexico as its backyard. He was immediately
reprimanded by Colin Powell, who said that he-- this man did not
understand the history of US-Mexican relations. And in fact, he was soon
removed from his post. That's how much clout we have. He was then removed from his
post as Mexican ambassador to the United Nations. So yes, without
that history, you might actually
believe Bush when he says, in his recent inaugural
address, that it is-- how did he put it-- [INAUDIBLE] mission
of the United States to spread liberty
around the world. Spreading liberty around
the world, as he put it, is the calling of our time. And if you read the newspapers,
including calling the so-called liberal press-- The New York Times,
The Washington Post-- right after the-- Bush's inaugural address,
you saw a flurry of praise for what Bush had
said as if people were in the editorial rooms
of these newspapers were so eager to hear those
words about spreading liberty in the world, and as
if everything else that has been reported from Iraq
over the past two years is meaningless in light
of these beautiful words uttered by George Bush. But all I would
have to do would be to just, with a
very short memory, remember that a couple
of days before Bush's inaugural address-- a couple of days
before that, there was a photo in the New York
Times, which some of you may have seen. It showed an Iraqi girl
crouching, bleeding, and according to
the caption, she was screaming because
her parents had just been shot to death by
Americans firing on their car. And of course,
[INAUDIBLE] well, we-- claim the military--
we'll investigate. There were warning shots. How do you distinguish a
warning shot from a shot? But in any case, to me, this was
some remarkable juxtaposition of-- but also a testament to the loss
of memory, even a memory that can last a couple
of days, to see this eager acceptance of
Bush's words about liberty and this idea of
American exceptionalism. You were told I would
speak for an hour or so. I'm taking advantage
of every minute of it. Because when I heard
it, I said, no, I'm not going to speak for an hour. Actually, I want to
speak for two hours. What this idea of special
American dispensation in the world-- what it leads to
is an abrogation of all sorts of responsibilities
to the human race, to everybody else in the world. And it means that
the United States is exempt from these
responsibilities. I told you about
Madeleine Albright declaring that we have a right,
if necessary, to be unilateral. When she said that,
Henry Kissinger said, this principal of our right
to take unilateral action, he said, should not
be universalized. That's an interesting thought. It's a good principle for us. But no, it shouldn't
be universalized. No. There's a long list of instances
in which the United States has declared itself exempt from
international agreements, and international laws,
and the UN Charter, and the Convention on
Biological Weapons-- which was actually
signed some years ago, but which didn't have any
teeth, didn't have any force. And when it was proposed
to enforce this Convention on Biological Weapons
a few years ago, the Bush administration
said no way. It wouldn't go along with that. And I think most of us know
the United States has not gone along with the 100
or more nations that have outlawed landmines. And just the other
day, I spoke to a-- listened to actually--
and spoke with-- presentation by a surgeon-- an Italian surgeon
who, for 15 years, has been doing surgery on war
victims in every possible war zone of the world. Most of the people
he operates on, which includes a
lot of amputations, are children, and much of
that comes from landmines, 100 million of which are
strewn around the world. But the United States wants
to be exempt from the notion that we should outlaw landmines. And of course, we continue
[INAUDIBLE] things outlawed by the Geneva
Convention, and cluster bombs, and napalm. So what's the answer? What's the answer to this
very dangerous notion of American exceptionalism,
of our right to do as we will in the world? Well, I guess the answer
is sort of obvious. That is, the answer
is that those of us in the United States, and
in the world, who don't accept this idea must
declare very forcibly, and act very vigorously
against this idea, and insist that the ethical
norms that most decent people can agree on should be observed,
and that no country should be an exception to the rule of
morality in world affairs, and that the
children of the world should all be seen
as part of a family, and that the children of Iraq,
or the children of China, or the children of
anywhere in the world have the same right to
life as American children. Those a very fundamental
moral principles which, if our government
doesn't uphold them, we must uphold them. Fortunately, there are
people all over the world who want to uphold
those principles, and who oppose it when the
United States does not. And we saw on
February 15, 2003-- on the eve of the
invasion of Iraq, we saw that amazing moment
when, on one day, 10 to 15 million people around
the world, in 60, 70 countries around the world,
demonstrated against that war. So there are people
all over the world who do not accept the idea
of American exceptionalism. When last week, the State
Department issued its report on human rights abuses-- some of you may have seen
it in the newspapers-- State Department
issued this report on-- it does this every year. It lists countries which are
guilty of torture and other abuses of human rights. And so it lists a
bunch of countries. A number of those
countries are countries which are allies of
the United States. A number of those are
countries to which the United States has sent prisoners. And I think, by now, you
know that this notion of extraordinary
rendition, where we're not going to torture
these people-- we'll send them to countries
which will torture them. And so the State
Department issues this list of countries which
have violated human rights. And then when the
report came out, there were responses
from around the world which said, hey, there's
one country which is missing from this list. Yes, what about
the United States? A Turkish newspaper
said, there's not even a mention of the
incidents in Abu Ghraib prison. No mention of Guantanamo. A newspaper in Sydney,
Australia pointed out that the United
States Senate sends suspects-- remember
suspects are not people who have been tried
and found guilty of anything, just people who are suspected
of doing something-- sends suspects to prisons in Morocco,
Egypt, Libya, Uzbekistan, countries that the State
Department says uses torture. And so people around
the world, yes, and here in the United States. And this is something that we
very often are deprived of. We're not only
deprived of history. We're very often deprived
of immediate history, because we're deprived of things
that happen in this country that people are doing
that we don't know about, because this is a big country. But that would be
an easy excuse, that we're a big
country and that's why we don't know about them. No. We don't know about
these things that are happening around the country-- these protests, these
declarations of humanity, we don't know about them because
they're not really reported. And so if you go to the
internet, you might find out. If you go to a rally, you might
get some of this information. If you travel around the
country, you might learn that-- this coming weekend,
there are going to be demonstrations in
cities all over the country. There's going to be a
demonstration in New Orleans. There's going to be a
demonstration in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And there's a resistance
movement in the United States to this war. And you see only the
superficial, you might say, recognition of this, when
you read public opinion polls, which show that now,
about half the country does not believe in the war. And if half the country
does not believe in the war, then somewhere among
that 50%, there must be many, many people who
are actively opposing that war. And those people are, in
fact, engaged in protests all over the United States. And what's perhaps
most significant is that, in the armed forces
and in the families of the armed forces, there is more and
more defection from this war. The Iraqi Veterans
Against the War formed in kind of reprise of
what we had during Vietnam-- Vietnam Veterans
Against the War. And we have military
families speak out of the families of
soldiers organizing, and who now have
thousands of members. And GIs themselves,
GIs in the field-- and you've read about instances
of mutiny and GIs who say, we don't want to--
who've been to Iraq, who are being sent back,
who don't want to go back. And some of them go to
Canada, and some of them get court-martialed. This is important,
because I think of what Einstein said when-- after World War I,
horrified by that war and by the idea of war
itself, and by the knowledge that now, modern warfare would
be indiscriminate and massive. And Einstein said, wars will
stop when men refuse to fight. And so the refusal to fight,
and refusal of families to let their kids fight, and
the insistence of the parents of high school kids that
they will not let recruiters come into the high schools
and approach their kids, all of these things-- these things are
consistent with what Einstein thought was ultimately
the way that wars would stop. So I leave you with the
idea that we're not alone, and that there are people
all over the world and people in this country
who do not accept the idea of a
special dispensation to do whatever we
want in the world, and that we'll insist on human
equality of people everywhere. And I think of William Lloyd
Garrison, the abolitionist. And I think of what
was on the masthead of his antislavery
newspaper, The Liberator. On his masthead were the
words, my country is the world, my country are mankind-- a good thing to
remember Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SANYAL: We have around
15 minutes for questions. [INAUDIBLE] AUDIENCE: Hi, professor. My question was, do the
people in our government-- do they believe
their own rhetoric? Because I feel it must take an
extreme suspension of belief to believe a lot of this
rhetoric of democracy and American freedom
being spread everywhere. Or do they act knowingly? And if they act blindly, is
it because of the structure of our educational systems
and our government, or do they simply act with
the knowledge of disbelief [INAUDIBLE]? ZINN: [INAUDIBLE] This
will be just between us. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
they actually believe what [INAUDIBLE] ZINN: Oh, oh. AUDIENCE: And if they didn't
believe it, [INAUDIBLE] educational systems [INAUDIBLE]
government [INAUDIBLE] MODERATOR: Please use the
microphones for the video tape. ZINN: Did you hear the question? Okay. Do the people in government,
to do what they do, do they believe in what
they do, or are they brainwashed by themselves? That's a tough question. And I don't think I
have an answer to this. I don't know if anybody
has an answer this, because I think there's-- I think the answer varies
from person to person. I think there are people who do
understand what they're doing and don't care. They know what they want
and they're going to get it. And they don't care, and
they're willing to lie. But the lies are
acceptable because it's going to achieve the
results that they want. These people are cynical people. They know what they're doing. And there are other people, I
think, who persuade themselves. The human mind has an infinite
capacity for self-deception, and therefore,
there are people-- I'm sure there are people in
government who really believe in what they're doing, who
actually believe that they're advancing the cause of
liberty and democracy in the world about
what they're doing. But as I say, I
don't think there's anyone to answer for this great
conglomeration of decision makers. AUDIENCE: My name
is [INAUDIBLE].. I'm one of the
[INAUDIBLE] fellows. I'm from Israel. And I wanted to ask,
which kind of institutions in American society
do you think needs to implement these moral norms? Because I was looking at
the United States policy in the last two years-- the detainees at Guantanamo
and about the judiciary-- and I was seeing
that the judiciary was more interested
in gay marriage than in detainees' rights. And I was asking myself,
which kind of institutes will handle these
kind of moral issues that you're speaking about? ZINN: You say what kind of-- AUDIENCE: Institution. ZINN: Institution. Especially in countries
that have institutions that seem democratic and
that, on the surface, will guarantee our
liberties, I think that a country like
the United States, we tend to overvalue
institutions. And very often, we think
that, if a situation is bad, we can correct it by setting
up another institution or by amending the Constitution. I can't tell you how many
times people have approached me and said, I have the following
amendments to the Constitution. Don't you think that, if we
adopted these amendments, that everything-- no. Institutions are all malleable,
subject to interpretation. We can see that with
the Constitution. We can see that with even
the Supreme Court, which claims to be a strict
interpreter of whatever the Constitution says. And no, all these institutions
depend on who has the power. And laws are violated with
impunity by the government. It doesn't matter
what laws you pass. You can pass a law limiting
the powers of the FBI. Won't matter, because the FBI
doesn't have to obey the law, because if the FBI violates
the law, who will go after it? The FBI? We have a long history of
government a violation of law, and so the answer doesn't lie
in institutions or even in laws. Now, it helps to have
some laws, rather than other laws, but the-- those aren't critical. We changed the Constitution
at the end of the Civil War to give black people,
well, freedom from slavery, presumably equal rights, with
the 14th Amendment, the right to vote, with the
15th Amendment. And so there, we had
institutionalized racial equality. Didn't matter, because
the 14th and 15th-- and even to a certain
extent, the 13th, because blacks were really
put back in a semi-slavery by their lack of resources--
but the 14th and 15th Amendments was simply unenforced. Not only were they unenforced,
but the 14th Amendment, presumably passed to assure
equality for black people-- 14th Amendment became a
tool for corporations, to protect corporations against
governmental regulation. And so the laws, institutions
are not critical, as I say, sure, it's better to-- if you can set up
better institutions, if you can put
better laws in, fine. But that is never enough. It takes citizen action. When we've had changes-- important social changes
take place in this country, it hasn't come as
a result of changes in institutions-- certainly
not changes in who is elected. No, it's come through the
growth of social movements. And that was true of
winning a degree of freedom for ex-slaves, and it's true
of winning rights of workers, and true in-- well, in
recent years, whatever rights have been won by women,
or by disabled people, or by black people. They have not come
simply through the change in institutions. Although that may accompany
the social movements. That come out of the
social movements. But basically, it's citizen
action, and organization, and willing to take risks on
behalf of important values. Those have been crucial. AUDIENCE: My name's [INAUDIBLE]. I wouldn't think it would
be exceptional to think that this problem is a uniquely
American problem, and that, over the course of history,
that numerous societies assumed that they were exceptional-- the Romans, the
British, the Japanese-- at different points in time. So as a historian,
can you give us any examples where societies
have successfully climbed down from this progenerating
myth about themselves to actually assuming
that they're equal with other people? Is there any success stories? ZINN: Historical
examples of where nations have divested themselves
of this exceptionalism, and accepted the idea of
equality with other people? Only when they were forced to. That is, the British
Empire was dismantled, but not out of sheer generosity. But it was forced to dismantle. And no, I don't know
of any government which has claimed exceptional
position for itself, which has given up that in
deference to human rights. But governments and
empires in the past have fallen and have
been forced to retrench, as the Belgians in Africa, and
the British and French in Asia, but only when compelled
to by resistance. AUDIENCE: When speaking
about exceptionalism, you were talking
about a outside threat helping to justify a
lot of US aggression and taking on imperial actions. I was wondering, prior to the
justification of communism, what was the US
justification for expansion? And what was it-- as part of a reflection of the
time that we all live through, what was the prevailing thought
between the fall of communism and the prevailing
idea of terrorism now? ZINN: Well, so two
questions, I guess. What was our justification
before communism? [INAUDIBLE] different
justifications over those several centuries. In the case of, for instance,
our wars against the Indians and our expansion
there, very often, the justification was that
we were civilizing them. They were savage
group, and we were-- and therefore, we
were civilizing them. And when we conquered them, we
tried to take the young people and put them into
special schools to teach them
civilization, and so on. So as civilizing other
people who were backward, there was a certain
amount of justification for that in the
Mexican War certainly, in the Philippine War. And as I pointed out, in
Cuba, the justification was liberating the Cubans. In the case of our forays
into Central America-- of which there were many, many
marine forays into Central America in the early
part of the 20th century, culminating in, you might say,
the long occupation of Haiti and a long occupation
of Dominican Republic-- the justification was
that there was disorder and we were bringing
order to these countries. And in the case
of, for instance, of Theodore Roosevelt,
who developed something called the
Roosevelt corollary, the justification was-- corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine-- justification was, well, he's-- they're unstable. They're not able to take care
of their own finances, which means they really can't take
care of their obligations to the United States. We don't like that. Sort of their varying
sparing reasons given for all of these
foreign policy actions before communism became a
easy, monolithic excuse. And you're asking about
what about between the fall of the Soviet Union and
the war on terrorism. Well, I guess you see an
example in the war on Panama, or the first Gulf War. The war on Panama
takes place just at the point with the Soviet
Union is falling apart. The justification
of the war in Panama is, well, Noriega bad man. He no longer likes us. He did at one time. He worked for us. Doesn't want to
work for us anymore. And furthermore, he's
involved in the drug trade. And we want to get him,
and we want to do something about the drug trade. Well, if you know what's
happening with the drug trade today, you'd be
dubious about that. By the way, there's a-- if you want to read something
more interesting than the kinds of things I tell you about
history and about Panama, read Johns le Carré's
novel, The Taylor of Panama. In John le Carré's novel
The Tailor of Panama, he has a small section in which
he deals with the American invasion of Panama and
the mayhem that we created in Panama. But then, of course,
the first Gulf War took place between the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the war on terrorism. What was the reason there? Well, the reason there-- the justification
given for that was that Iraq had invaded Kuwait,
which is certainly true, and certainly not justifiable. But there's an interesting
leap that takes place in thinking about war. It's a leap from a just
cause to a just war. A cause may be just,
and that is that-- keeping Kuwait out of
Saddam Hussein's hands is a just cause. But then you're making a
jump, if you immediately rush from that to the idea of,
therefore, war is required. Just as in Korea, we-- it was unjust for North Korea
to move into South Korea, but-- so there was a just
cause there, but that leaves open the question
of whether then, the proper response, the human
response the best response to that was to go to war, and
therefore, would be a just war. Well, not quite. We know now [INAUDIBLE] have
three years of war in Korea. Two or three million people dead
in Korea, and at the end of it, we were back where we were
when the war started back, back to North Korea dictatorship,
South Korea dictatorship. So it was a just cause. The question is, should
we have gone to war? Motivation is important. It is important to ask whether
motivations that are expressed are honest ones. And I think it's worth
thinking about this question-- did George Bush Senior go
to war against Iraq in 1991 because he was heartbroken
over the invasion of Kuwait? That's hard to believe. There've been other invasions. There've been other occupations. We don't go to war over every
invasion, every occupation. Is it possible that there's
something about Iraq and its oil reserves
and the Middle East that prompted, again, the
real taking over of Kuwait, but made that a very convenient
excuse to move into Iraq and then to establish
bases there? And the bases that we
established in Saudi Arabia came directly out of that war. MODERATOR: [INAUDIBLE]
Last question. ZINN: Last question. Oh. AUDIENCE: My name's James. There's a current of
American exceptionalism, if I'm not mistaken,
that has to do with trying to explain
why there hasn't been a strong social
democracy in America like there has been in some, if
not many, European countries. And I think probably the most-- the best-known exponent
of this is probably if-- and correct me,
if I'm mistaken-- Seymour Martin Lipset, the
Canadian political scientist, I think, is one of the
best-known to put forward this attempt to explain
American exceptionalism, ie the absence of a strong
social democracy, or even a stronger socialist movement. What's your take on this current
of what is sometimes referred to as American exceptionalism? But more importantly,
what's your take on the whole idea of trying
to come to terms with quote, unquote, "why there
hasn't been a stronger movement for social democracy-- realized social democracy
in the United States? And parenthetically,
how much would you say the incredible
diversity in this country is part of the
challenge that anybody interested in that
programmatically has to come to terms with? ZINN: Well, James, you
know that's a big question. And I don't deal
with big questions. [INAUDIBLE] little ones. I like little questions. Well, you mentioned diversity. This is an issue which
American historians and political
scientists [INAUDIBLE] have grappled with
for a very long time. So here I am MIT on
this day, and I'm going to give the definitive, final-- after all these people
have worked on this, I am going to tell you
what the real truth is. Yes, of course. You can give a
number of reasons why we haven't had a very powerful,
radical, left movement in the United States. And you can find,
yes, diversity-- the size of the country, all
the conflicts between immigrants and native-born, they use the
pitting of people against one another-- black against white-- the reformism of
the United States, the doling out of little
goodies to the middle class to create a large
enough middle class to act as a buffer between the
very rich and the very poor. There are a number of
reasons, I think, for the fact that there hasn't been a
powerful movement in the United States. But I would add one more thing. I think there's a tendency on
the part of a lot of people-- I would never accuse
you of this, James-- but there are
people who, I think, make too great a distinction
between the United States-- [INAUDIBLE] who see too
much exceptionalism there-- too great a distinction
between the United States and other post-industrial
countries. As if, well, these countries
have great social movements-- England, France, Italy-- but
the United States lags behind, I don't-- I reject the idea of
that sharp a distinction between these
countries in Europe. Granted that, sure, there's
a big powerful trade union movement in France, and there
isn't a powerful trade union movement here. But we had important
social movements in this country
from time to time, and we'll probably
have one again, especially if things
continue the way they are. And I think it's too
easy to denigrate the amount of social protest,
and social organization, and resistance that there
has been in this country throughout our history. At the beginning of
the 20th century, we had a very powerful socialist
movement in this country. We had a radical labor
unions at the beginning of the 20th century, and
then again in the '30s, with the CIO. The great movements of the
'60s are very important social movements You might say more-- certainly more-- which had no
counterpart really in Europe, except France '68, and so on. But I guess what I'm
saying is I don't think we're as exceptional
as a lot of people make us out to be
in lagging behind in the development
of social movements and social consciousness. We have a long way to go. That's the last question? [APPLAUSE] Okay.
Yeah Zinn has written some interesting stuff but he's quick to ascribe collective guilt to races or nationalities, which is pretty bad imo.
It pretty much been this way since post Civil War. We really haven’t changed all that much other than adapt society and the economy to modern capitalistic needs. However, at the core of our capitalist system is and always has been a relationship of corruption between politicians and wealthy businessmen who have lobbied legislators for favorable politics and policy.
The middle class tried its (still biased) best to remedy the conflict between the rich and the poor, but all they did was create institutions and empower professionals to oversee the more favorable (but still biased) economic pathways to success into the middle and upper classes. The middle class has acted as a spigot to economic success and it’s clear today that the rich have had their hands on it the entire time.
We are a genocidal corporate oligarchy, willing to kill our indigenous and Arabs for daring to want to control their own oil. Greed and short memories keep us from recognizing we are killing the planet herself.
I don’t care about historic sins until Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand also start caring
We need better propaganda to make US past look good!