As Iraq votes, historian, iconoclast looks to Vietnam; Says lack of position cost Democrats in 1968

Howard Zinn, critically acclaimed historian and political scientist, is author of the "People's History of the United States," a radical and popular retelling of American history. Zinn, 83, has written fifteen books and is a longstanding critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is now a professor emeritus at Boston University.

Raw Story's John Byrne: Speaking to elementary school children Tuesday, Lynne Cheney compared this week's parliamentary elections in Iraq to America's own early struggle for democracy. "Two hundred and seventeen years ago, we held our first vote under our Constitution," she said. "We started then on the path the Iraqis are walking now." What do you make of that?

Boston University Professor Emeritus of Political Science Howard Zinn: [Laughs] It's sort of ridiculous the juxtaposition of an election that took place in the United States after we had gotten rid of an occupying power, England, an election which represented our independence, with an election that is taking place now, which is in the midst of an occupation. It's like saying when the British were still maintaining troops throughout the 13 colonies, while still maintaining control, had pronounced that now democracy was being brought to the 13 colonies. We were holding an election after ousting the occupying power.

Raw Story: Do you think the Iraq situation is "better" than Vietnam because they are having elections?

Zinn: Well, elections are a very, very superficial way of judging whether there is democracy in the country. There were elections taking place in Vietnam in 1967, and they said this is a good sign. It meant nothing, because we were still bombarding the country... the Vietnamese people were not liking us anymore.... the elections are held amidst the military occupation of the country.

Raw Story: So basically democracy under the gun is not democracy.

Zinn: Yeah, exactly.

Raw Story: If you were a Democratic member of Congress and involved in shaping the party's plan and statements with regard to the Iraq conflict, what would you tell your colleagues? What would you tell the country?

Zinn: If I were Nancy Pelosi I would certainly say to my fellow Democrats, "If we want to win the next election we better get with the American people, they're way ahead of us. The American people are forthrightly against the war and we're forthrightly about [nothing]." The American people are much more bold and forthright. If I were any Democratic leader, if I were Howard Dean - who unfortunately has been the kind of silent head of the Democratic National Committee - I would say to my fellow Democrats, wake up. If you don't give the American people what the American people want, then you are going to go down in history as a party that loses and loses and loses.

Raw Story: How do the Democratic positions compare now to their positions during Vietnam?

Zinn: Certainly when the elections were taking place in 1967, the Democratic Party still had not taken a position against the war. Only by 1968 when the election was coming up did we have an anti-war candidate. Johnson was out of the race because in fact he recognized that he somehow was missing history. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy understood by 1968 that the war was wrong and furthermore that the American people knew the war was wrong. And so they at least provided some leadership to the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, neither of them made it and the Democratic Party devolved into the hands of Hubert Humphrey who had been a supporter of the war, and Humphrey lost narrowly to Nixon... similar to the 2004 election because Humphrey did not give a clear support for what the American people wanted, which was to get out of Vietnam.

Raw Story: Rumsfeld was recently seen dining with Henry Kissinger, one of the architects of the Vietnam War and Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford. What tips do you suppose Kissinger could offer Rumsfeld, given his experience in that war?

Zinn: The two belong together. They're birds of feather and I would say vultures of a feather. If Kissinger really understood what we did in Vietnam then he would have been telling Rumsfeld to get out of the Iraq war as fast as possible, and tell him that people will forget that we cut and run. They'll only be grateful that we stopped the killing. I think he would be telling him - if he were really giving him good advice - that no amount of American troops put in there will help; sending more troops to Vietnam didn't help the situation at all. We had 500,000 troops in Vietnam. Basically, if the people don't want us to be there, then no amount of troops is going to make our position satisfying. In fact, the more troops we send the more unsatisfying our presence will be.

Raw Story: In a recent CBS poll, 17 percent of Americans surveyed said they felt the war in Iraq was about oil - a greater percentage than those who thought the war was aimed at fighting terrorism or deposing Saddam Hussein. Do you believe the war was about oil?

Zinn: I think the war is about several things... [not so much about oil as] about the availability of oil, because if we didn't control the oil, Iraq would have to sell the oil; they would sell it to us and to everybody else. The war isn't really about oil but about the price of oil which makes the loss of life even more horrendous.

The control of oil is certainly a major factor. All of our policies since the end of World War II have been based on the control of oil, hence the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 over his nationalization of oil. Beyond oil, it's a matter of empire. Were the French in Indochina because of rubber? Yes, but that was only part of it. Did Mussolini go into Ethiopia because the Italians needed land? No, Mussolini wanted to restore the glory of the Roman Empire, and the United States is hellbent on creating the greatest empire in world history. It's oil, and it's empire and it's business.

And it's control. Wars create a situation where the ruling party is better able to control the situation, hence the Patriot Act, and war is an opportunity for profiteering.... I remember during the Vietnam war one of the great posters was done by a quite well-known artist Seymour Chwast, and the poster simply said in big letters: "War Is Good for Business: Invest Your Son." Very chilling, but true.

Raw Story: Do you think we can win in Iraq?

Zinn: The overall sense is not even it's a question of being a winnable war, it's a war we shouldn't win. If we were winning that wouldn't have made it right; the point is we shouldn't be there in the first place. We don't belong there. We invaded that country. It didn't attack us. It's as clear cut a case of naked aggression as you can find. People were sentenced to hang at Nuremberg in World War II for engaging in a war of aggression against other nations and that's what we've done in Iraq. Just reading about Tookie [who was executed by lethal injection in California]... and here is Schwarzenegger showing no remorse... Bush and Cheney and the whole White House group are responsible for the killing of millions of people. They have shown no remorse. So we are in a crazy world where this black man who may have killed four people twenty years ago is sent to prison and other people who are killing people daily right now are free. We've living in absurdity.

Raw Story: How well do you think the media is doing at explaining the situation in Iraq?

Zinn: The media is not educating the America public. The media is not playing the role that the media should be which is to sharply criticize the government when it knows the government is wrong and to represent the interests of the people. And you see the press conferences, and you see how soft the questions are. Take what's supposed to be the best of the media, that is public television, and the Lehrer Newshour, and what you see is... blatant government policies. They have a discussion on torture and they have a lawyer for torture and a lawyer who is sort of against torture. And you wouldn't there have someone on the Holocaust - you wouldn't have somebody who supports the Holocaust and someone who is sort of against the Holocaust. The spectrum that's represented in the media runs from slightly left of center to the extreme right.

Raw Story: There have recently been revelations of secret CIA prisons. Is this unusual for the CIA?

Zinn: The government has never been reluctant to go outside the law to carry out its policies. If you look at the reports of the Church Committee in 1975 of the CIA and the FBI and you see absolutely blatant violations of law by both the CIA and the FBI. You see planned assassination attempts, you see all sorts of skullduggery going on. But I think what we are seeing now in the detention of people in Guantanamo Bay and secret places overseas, you're seeing something more far reaching in the violation of basic constitution rights than we've ever seen before.

In World War I, people were put on trial or sent to prison. But here we have a situation where people aren't even put on trial, they are just put away and nobody hears from them again. You might say the Bush Administration is taking the history of the abuse of civil liberties and just going twenty degrees beyond it.

Raw Story: What's going well?

Zinn: What's going well is the growing rejection of the war by Americans, the growing willingness of the Americans to speak up against the war, the growing protest against high school recruiting by young people and people all over the country. What's going well is what has always gone well - the willingness of the American people to resist the war and growing consciousness of what is wrong. The graph is moving in the direction of greater public understanding and also going in the direction of the crumbling of the legitimacy of this Administration.