The Progressive,
July 4, 2007
Put
away the flags
By Howard
Zinn
On this July
4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols:
its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence
in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism
-- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it
engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along
with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways
of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood
on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those
out of power.
National spirit
can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military
power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica
and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing
thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been
harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others
and to ourselves.
Our citizenry
has been brought up to see our nation as different from others,
an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other
lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception
started early.
When the first
English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and
were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot
Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the
taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one
of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee,
the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of
the Earth for thy possession."
When the English
set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children,
the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed
that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that
day."
On the eve
of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest
Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence."
After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced:
"We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that
beautiful country."
It was always
supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to
war.
We invaded
Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines
shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize
and Christianize" the Filipino people.
As our armies
were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000
Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary
of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from
all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began.
He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order,
and of peace and happiness."
We see in
Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against
their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some
soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are
victims, too, of our government's lies.
How many times
have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die,
if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty,"
for "democracy"?
One of the
effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion.
The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification
for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of
3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing
tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism
is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by
Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries
in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that
God speaks through him.
We need to
refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior
to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to
assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard
Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling
"A People's History of the United States" (Perennial
Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by
the Progressive Media Project. Email to: Progressive Media Project
using our contact form.
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