Paul-Robert Lookman:
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US emerged as
the world's sole superpower. Its reliance on the reach of the Pentagon to
compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains, and the necessity to contend with
shrinking resources, rising adversaries, and growing resistance, led to a record
number of US interventions. To comprehend America's
rationale for its post-cold war global role, one has to understand the less
widely known side of America's
history. When Martin Luther King Jr. stated that the US was the most violent of all
nations, he would only have needed to point to history books such as A People's
History of the United States in support of his view. Since its publication
in 1980, this great work by the late American historian and political scientist
Howard Zinn has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing
out the official version of history taught in schools.
Critics claimed that Zinn was unpatriotic. He responded that patriotism
also requires dissent, activism, and a critical assessment of standard takes on
history. The World War II Army Air Force veteran - an early and outspoken
critic of the US war in Vietnam - was
87 when he died January 27, 2010. Too bad Howard was not around to document
the first black President's failures. In Zinn's view these were ever so similar
to the other ambitious politicians' grab for more land and power, at the
expense of the people. Asked a few
weeks before his demise how the newly elected president Barack Obama could ensure
transformational change, Zinn answered:
"Withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as ships and planes
can carry them home, declare that the United States will not engage in
aggressive wars, renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war and the Carter
doctrine, which threatens force to control Mideast oil, and start dismantling
our military bases overseas. He should announce that we are henceforth a
peace-loving nation, no longer a target for terrorists and no longer engaging
in terrorism ourselves. He should reduce the military establishment and the
military budget down to a bare minimum and create a jobs program for young
people instead of recruiting them for military service."
The similarity to the quote Obama used during his Cairo speech of June
4, 2009 is striking: "Indeed, we can
recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: ‘I hope that our wisdom
will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the
greater it will be'." A pledge the current president has yet to redeem. With regard to Omaba's first year in
office, Zinn wrote in The Nation of January 21, 2010:
"I've been searching hard for a highlight. I don't see any kind of a
highlight in his actions and policies. I think people are dazzled by Obama's
rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to
be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president."
A People's History of the United States possesses
something few history books offer: the potential to re-wire how people think of
their government, their history, their relationship to democracy, and their own
political agency. An updated hardcover edition is on sale
at HarperCollinsPublishers. With Howard
Zinn's explicit permission, an online version has been made
available at http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html.
Paul Lookman is a political activist. He writes a blog on
international politics in Dutch and English called "Geopolitiek in
perspectief" (http://geopolitiek-in-perspectief.blogspot.com/).
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US emerged as
the world's sole superpower. Its reliance on the reach of the Pentagon to
compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains, and the necessity to contend with
shrinking resources, rising adversaries, and growing resistance, led to a record
number of US interventions. To comprehend America's
rationale for its post-cold war global role, one has to understand the less
widely known side of America's
history. When Martin Luther King Jr. stated that the US was the most violent of all
nations, he would only have needed to point to history books such as A People's
History of the United States in support of his view. Since its publication
in 1980, this great work by the late American historian and political scientist
Howard Zinn has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing
out the official version of history taught in schools.
Critics claimed that Zinn was unpatriotic. He responded that patriotism
also requires dissent, activism, and a critical assessment of standard takes on
history. The World War II Army Air Force veteran - an early and outspoken
critic of the US war in Vietnam - was
87 when he died January 27, 2010. Too bad Howard was not around to document
the first black President's failures. In Zinn's view these were ever so similar
to the other ambitious politicians' grab for more land and power, at the
expense of the people. Asked a few
weeks before his demise how the newly elected president Barack Obama could ensure
transformational change, Zinn answered:
"Withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as ships and planes
can carry them home, declare that the United States will not engage in
aggressive wars, renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war and the Carter
doctrine, which threatens force to control Mideast oil, and start dismantling
our military bases overseas. He should announce that we are henceforth a
peace-loving nation, no longer a target for terrorists and no longer engaging
in terrorism ourselves. He should reduce the military establishment and the
military budget down to a bare minimum and create a jobs program for young
people instead of recruiting them for military service."
The similarity to the quote Obama used during his Cairo speech of June
4, 2009 is striking: "Indeed, we can
recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: ‘I hope that our wisdom
will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the
greater it will be'." A pledge the current president has yet to redeem. With regard to Omaba's first year in
office, Zinn wrote in The Nation of January 21, 2010:
"I've been searching hard for a highlight. I don't see any kind of a
highlight in his actions and policies. I think people are dazzled by Obama's
rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to
be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president."
A People's History of the United States possesses
something few history books offer: the potential to re-wire how people think of
their government, their history, their relationship to democracy, and their own
political agency. An updated hardcover edition is on sale
at HarperCollinsPublishers. With Howard
Zinn's explicit permission, an online version has been made
available at http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html.
Paul Lookman is a political activist. He writes a blog on
international politics in Dutch and English called "Geopolitiek in
perspectief" (http://geopolitiek-in-perspectief.blogspot.com/).
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September 9, 2010
Darrell Calvin Brown, City College of San Francisco/SFSU, Gold Contributor (130)