WOW: NY high school students getting it!!! (Zinn at Montclair High)

[Gloria]

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/essex/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1083137773248291.xml#continue

WWII vet-author opposes Iraq 'quick fix'
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
BY PHILIP READ
Star-Ledger Staff

He wasn't your stereotypical World War II veteran visiting a suburban New Jersey school.

No tales of a glorious flag-raising or a courageous storming of the beaches at Normandy.

This was Howard Zinn.

Sure, he was a bombardier in Europe. But in all those ensuing years, Zinn has been saying things like he said yesterday to students at Montclair High School.

"War does not solve fundamental problems, and in the meantime you've killed a lot of people. It's like a quick fix, a high," Zinn said.

His life stories were not unlike the ones he told to generations of students at Boston University, about his political transformation, about being a bombardier over targets in Europe and the resulting loss of civilian life.

"I participated in bombing raids when we were told this and told that, and I didn't question," said Zinn, a slight man wearing a gray V-neck sweater over an open-collared blue shirt and often times sporting a seemingly ageless smile.

"If you haven't studied history, you might actually believe the president of the United States when he says we need to go to war for liberty."

Not Zinn. Nor apparently most of his audience.

Zinn, asking for a show of hands, saw a sea of arms go up in a packed auditorium of hundreds when he asked who opposed the war in Iraq. Fewer than two dozen students could be seen of those "for" the war.

It was a show of skepticism that would no doubt satisfy the Boston University professor emeritus and Harvard University fellow.

"What history does is make you skeptical of authority," Zinn said.

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