Dr. Frank's What's-it

Zinn-ophobia

Matt Welch also points out Howard Zinn's latest column, which cites the extremely questionable Mark Herold study of Afghan civilian casualties. The Herold study has been as roundly debunked as anything in the blogosphere, including by me. His number of 4,000 is uncritically cited by Zinn, as it was by George Monbiot in a recent episode of BBC's NewsNight (so it's definitely making the lefty rounds.)

Herold cooked up this figure by selectively using questionable sources to support his pre-conceived conclusion that the US military, motivated by racism, intentionally developed its target set in order to cause as many civilian casualties as possible. Zinn, like most people who invoke Herold, doesn't quite follow him down this absurd road, but he does characterize the US campaign as embodying, if not deliberate, racially-motivated murder, at least a "reckless disregard for human life." He then asks:

What if all those Americans who declare their support for Bush's "war on terrorism" could see, instead of those elusive symbols--Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda--the real human beings who have died under our bombs? I do believe they would have second thoughts.

There are those on the left, normally compassionate people whose instincts go against war, who were, surprisingly, seduced by early Administration assurances and consoled themselves with words like "limited" military action and "measured" response. I think they, too, if confronted with the magnitude of the human suffering caused by the war in Afghanistan, would have second thoughts.

But what does Zinn propose as an alternative to the campaign to destroy al-Qaeda and oust their Taleban hosts? Nothing, other than a bland call to "embrace a universal morality, to think of all children, everywhere, as our own." It's a nice thought, but it would still leave us with cave complexes and training camps full of people planning the murder of Americans through suicide attacks, conducting research to make their bombs more deadly; not to mention the Taleban regime which sheltered these monsters and, in its own right, preyed upon its own people with unprecedented and shameless cruelty. Most importantly, perhaps, it would leave us with a triumphant horde of Islamo-fascist lunatics, emboldened by their apparent success and the lack of a resolute response to attempt, and to execute, even more daring strikes. Can anyone doubt that this would have been the result of American inaction? Can anyone seriously assert that this result would have been acceptable?

Perhaps Zinn isn't actually calling for inaction, but he remains silent as to what he is calling for, other than opposition for its own sake. (And perhaps it's not reasonable to expect anything else from the "people's historian.") At any rate, the human suffering reflected in Zinn's list of anecdotes is truly sobering and heart-rending. Yet, even as a normally compassionate person with a concern for all children everywhere, I honestly cannot think of an alternative non-military solution to this horrible problem.

Zinn and his "co-thinkers" seem motivated, in part, by nostalgia for a previous era when anti-war activism was more "relevant," more noble, when it had more content. The fantasy is that, as was supposed to be the case in Vietnam, frightful images of suffering and an accompanying sense of futility ought eventually to lead the public to reject the specious arguments of its purblind government and force it to withdraw from the conflict. But things have changed since the sixties. It's a different kind of conflict, as is so often said. We can't withdraw from it. We are in it whether we like it or not, and almost everyone seems to have realized it. Why hasn't Zinn?

Posted by Dr. Frank at January 25, 2002 06:49 PM | TrackBack