Howard Zinn Quotes
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
Zinn, Howard. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. Beacon Press, 1994, p. 140.
The Colonel defined people capable of bearing arms as males and females over 20 years of age. Many were slaughtered. Fortunately, most of his officers and men did not follow this order but enough did to make it one of the most disgraceful events in American military history. Smith was court marshaled and found guilty but his punishment was to be cashiered from the army. There were many atrocities committed by the minorities of both sides in this brutal war. Military and Congressional Investigations caused the army manual to be revised military policies reformed.
Lawrence of Arabia. In the Middle East, Lawrence led a small Arab army against the Turks and the Germans. In a battle near Tafas, the captured 250 Turkish and German soldiers as prisoners. They them shot them all in cold blood with their Hotchkiss machine gun. What makes this quotation so significant is that one of the great British heroes of WWI was actually guilty of War Crimes. An American journalist gave Lawrence and his exploits great publicity without mentioning the atrocities. The British chain of command also ignored the transgression of one of the most fundamental rules of war even though the clear evidence was in basic battle report files. However, the British never removed the report from the files or destroyed it. The Turks and the Germans while they respected the rules of war with the English, French, and most allies, treated the Arabs much more harshly and murdered Arab prisoners on many occasions. In part this atrocity at Tafas was an act of vengeance and retaliation. But Lawrence never even tried to explain it.
She was testifying about the atrocities of the Iraqis in their invasion of Kuwait. However, this was completely fraudulent and deliberated orchestrated, the result of a huge campaign orchestrated by the Kuwait Embassy and Hill & Knowlton, America’s largest PR firm. She was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States. When she testified, she was only identified by her first name “Nayirah” with the explanation that if her last name were disclosed, her family in Kuwait would be the victims of Iraqi reprisals. She appeared all over America whipping up support for the First Iraq War. The image of the Kuwaiti babies being left to die on the hospital floor became the icon for support for the war. Ironically, there was more than ample justification for America’s role in the war without making up fictions like this. However this quotation to many is an example of the fraudulent schemes and lies that war advocates will resort to in order to manipulate public opinion.
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States in 1980. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People's History of the United States.
