Iraq War Critic Howard Zinn

Boston University Professor Emeritus Howard Zinn, the author of the best-selling populist history A People's History of the United States, is a harsh critic of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the coalition dominated by United States. Once at the heart of the early civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests, the 85-year old Zinn asserts that the U.S. will end its war with, and occupation of, Iraq when resistance against the prosecution of the war increases within the military itself. It was resistance within the military that was a major factor that made continuing war in Vietnam untenable to the Nixon Administration. He also believes that the disillusionment of military families also will increase the pressure to put an end to the U.S. intervention in Iraq. This resistance by ordinary soldiers (and in the case of Iraq, many senior officers, including generals, both serving and retired) and their families is part of a "Silent Revolution" advocated by Zinn that he predicts will change society for the better, as it defeats the domestic forces that advocate war abroad and repression at home.

Zinn, the "People's Historian", has long been on the side of the "common man", linked to a populist tradition in American history hearkening back to Thomas Paine during the War for Independence. Because of his focus on the common people, Zinn is a vocal critic of establishment history texts that ignore the actual experiences of common people in order to create a myth of American exceptionalism in which all boats are lifted by the progress of American history. This myth even is extended to those people in countries the U.S. conquers under the mantle of "The White Man's Burden", a racist, xenophobic philosophy that cloaks economic aggression with the ethos of Social Darwinism. The term comes from the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, written about the American conquest of the Philippines, and it became gospel to a generation of jingoists in the 20th century, who disingenuously claimed that imperialist expansion was a noble cause, as it brought enlightenment and American values to backward peoples.