Empire or Humanity?: What the classroom didn’t teach me about the American empire

Article for Teachers and High School Students – PDF. By Howard Zinn. 4 pages.
An essay which raises questions about the justifications for empire building and imperialism.

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With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question anymore of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

Published by Rethinking Schools.

Keywords: United States, Eight Air Force, Second World War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, Afghanistan, British Empire, G.I. Bill of Rights, “The Age of Imperialism”, Spanish- American War of 1898, The Louisiana Purchase, Indian “ethnic cleansing”, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Trail of Tears, Civil War, Sand Creek massacre, War against Mexico in 1846, Manifest Destiny, Washington Post, Monroe Doctrine of 1823, Cuba, Philippines, Anti-Imperialist League, William James, Mark Twain, First World War, Panama Canal, General Smedley Butler, Dr. David Bradley, Bikini, Pacific, War in Korea, Columbia University, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, Asia, “Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal”, National Security Council, George Bush Sr., Saddam Hussein, King Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia, Mossadeq government, Defense Department, Henry Luce, Middle East, Mississippi Delta