WAR IS TERRORISM

HOWARD ZINN, PROGRESSIVE - The history of wars fought since the end of
World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United
States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were
unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations. Even
though the United States dropped more bombs in the Vietnam War than in
all of World War II, it was still forced to withdraw. The Soviet Union,
trying for a decade to conquer Afghanistan, in a war that caused a
million deaths, became bogged down and also finally withdrew.

Even the supposed triumphs of great military powers turn out to be
elusive. After attacking and invading Afghanistan, President Bush
boasted that the Taliban were defeated. But five years later,
Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of
the country. Last May, there were riots in Kabul, after a runaway
American military truck killed five Afghans. When U.S. soldiers fired
into the crowd, four more people were killed.

After the brief, apparently victorious war against Iraq in 1991, George
Bush Sr. declared (in a moment of rare eloquence): "The specter of
Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian
peninsula." Those sands are bloody once more.

The same George Bush presided over the military attack on Panama in
1989, which killed thousands and destroyed entire neighborhoods,
justified by the "war on drugs." Another victory, but in a few years,
the drug trade in Panama was thriving as before.

The nations of Eastern Europe, despite Soviet occupation, developed
resistance movements that eventually compelled the Soviet military to
leave. The United States, which had its way in Latin America for a
hundred years, has been unable, despite a long history of military
interventions, to control events in Cuba, or Venezuela, or Brazil, or
Bolivia.

Overwhelming Israeli military power, while occupying the West Bank and
Gaza, has not been able to stop the resistance movement of Palestinians.
Israel has not made itself more secure by its continued use of massive
force. The United States, despite two successive wars, in Iraq and
Afghanistan, is not more secure.

More important than the futility of armed force, and ultimately more
important, is the fact that war in our time always results in the
indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more
bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a
contradiction in terms. . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1024-35.htm