When massive numbers of deaths are okay
Sometimes a person will open a fascinating little window into his thinking, and you’ll find yourself looking into an ugly, illogical world that the person completely denies exists. This time, that person is Howard Zinn, well-known as one of the best-selling, most-taught, anti-American authors in the market right now.
A couple of weeks ago, Zinn debated Dennis Prager, and Prager has been reprinting parts of that debate. The part of the debate that caught my attention followed some dialogue where the two discussed America’s involvement in the Korean War. Zinn conceded that, but for American involvement, the whole peninsula would have been under North Korea’s thumb. He also conceded that North Korea was a bad thing, but he couldn’t get over the fact that the war killed people. That’s where we pick up the thread:
DP: Do you believe that that would be a net moral or immoral result for the Korean people and the world?
HZ: That would have been an immoral result, but the result of the war itself was also immoral — I’m talking about the killing of several million people. And what I’m suggesting is that the answer to . . . tyrannies like that is not war, which in our time always involves the massive killing of innocent people. . . . I think we have to find ways other than war to get rid of dictatorships and tyrannies.
DP: I would love that. But this is where we often consider people on the Left, at best, to be naive. . . . Let’s talk about that naivete. You believe that there would have been another way to get rid of the Korean communists — whom we both agree are monstrous — as opposed to the Korean War. . . . This is the naivete of the Left, that ugly things can be gotten rid of in sweet ways.
HZ: Not sweet ways. I wouldn’t say that. And I wouldn’t say either in totally peaceful ways . . . by struggle and resistance but not by war. We have historical examples of what I’m talking about. The Soviet Union, Stalinism, was not overthrown by war. . . . Stalinism was really replaced, in time, by the Russian people themselves. . . . What I’m suggesting is that there are a number of places in the world where we have had tyrannies that have been overthrown without war. . . .
I’m sure you all caught what I caught: Zinn thinks that the West’s peaceful defeat of the Soviet Union was the way to go: “The Soviet Union, Stalinism, was not overthrown by war. . . . Stalinism was really replaced, in time, by the Russian people themselves. . . . What I’m suggesting is that there are a number of places in the world where we have had tyrannies that have been overthrown without war. . . .” The unspoken implication is that this is a more humane approach, without the “massive killing of innocent people.”
What Zinn really means, of course, is the “massive killing of innocent people by American soldiers.” He seems totally unfazed by the fact that the hideous Soviet regime was responsible for murdering millions of its own people. While there is some debate about the numbers Stalin alone was responsible for killing during the 30s and 40s alone, the reasonable estimate is that, through executions, deportations and failed economic policies that led to mass starvation, Stalin was responsible for upwards of ten million deaths.
I’m sure Zinn would make precisely the same analysis for Communist China. Look, he’d say. We didn’t go into war there. We just used the peaceful approach of talks across the table. It’s certainly true that, if one ignores the proxy deaths in Vietnam and Korea, there have been no direct Chinese/American deaths due to war. I wonder, though, what kind of consolation that is to the more than twenty-five million people who died during the Mao era alone . There are estimates that up to seventy million people died, but those are contested, and twenty-five million is enough to shock an ordinary person’s conscience.
In any event, the words Zinn spoke that I quoted above are not a mistake. If you continue reading the same interview with Prager, you’ll discover that, over and over again, Zinn makes arguments that its okay for governments to slaughter and oppress their people in staggering numbers, but that it’s morally wrong for the U.S. ever to free those people, even if the U.S. is doing so as part of a legitimate defensive war. In other words, Zinn pose that he is a person who is all about love and light and kindness and as few deaths as possible is a complete fake. Zinn cares nothing about people and their well-being. The only thing Zinn cares about his promulgating his view that America is irredemiably evil, and he will ignore truth, logic and objectivity to force that conclusion on his audience. The sad thing is that, with Zinn being one of the most read authors in American high schools, his audience is dismally ill-equipped to recognize the gross reasoning fallacies and blind antipathy that animates his world view.
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*I know that this implosion occurred because of the external pressure the U.S. applied to the Soviet Union. Zinn’s anti-Americanism apparently prevents him from even acknowledging fact. In any event, while that’s an interesting side-line, it takes away from my real point.
**There are estimates that up to seventy million people died, but those are contested, and twenty-five million is more than enough to shock an ordinary person’s conscience.
