Bill Lear wrote:
On Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 08:52:58 (-0400) Louis Proyect writes:
Maxim Linchits wrote:
But it's not as if your position on the war is unproblematic. You said
that you were "emphatically" opposed to British and American
involvement in the *European* theatre, which is hardly a commonly held
position on the left, outside of orthodox Trotskyism.
My position is commonly held on the left, including Howard Zinn for example.
This is the Howard Zinn who was a bomber pilot in WWII?
It was actually his experience as a bombardier that turned him into a
pacifist.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2004/07/21/howard-zinn-you-cant-be-neutral-on-a-moving-train/
After WWII begins, Zinn decides to enlist into the Air Force as a
bombardier even though his navy yard job would have provided an
exemption. In the final weeks of the war, he and his fellow airmen are
given orders to bomb a small French town where German soldiers have been
spotted. Not only is the fighting virtually over, they are ordered to
drop an early version of napalm on the town, which kills many citizens
as well as “enemy” soldiers. From 30,000 feet, it is very difficult to
avoid “collateral damage.” This traumatizing event turns Zinn into a
pacifist. Unlike the Communist Party that always viewed the war as a
crusade against evil, Zinn would begin to question WWII and eventually
all wars. He should be seen as part of an important pacifist tradition
that also included Pacifica network founder Lew Hill and David
Dellinger, who went to prison for refusing to serve in the military. In
many ways, such figures were all-important in helping to shape the New Left.
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