Howard Zinn and Liberal Guilt Jack Kemp Recently the leftist historian Howard Zinn died. He can be seen on a YouTube video talking on camera in, "You Can't Be Neutral On a Moving Train", about his WWII experience. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPoz9QSJ6n8 Zinn states he was working in a shipbuilding yard in World War II and was thus exempt from the draft, yet he volunteered to get into the Army Air Force. Zinn was accepted and became a bombardier who flew missions over Berlin, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. for over three years. He then goes into a whole story about how he dropped "jellied gas," later called napalm, on German soldiers hiding in eastern France towards the end of the war and probably killed some French citizens as well and clearly condemns this effort. Considering that no country had the technology of modern laser guided bombs that could correct for wind drift of bombs dropped from tens of thousands of feet, this is a cheap shot criticism, claiming the lack of the perfect negates the good of fighting the Nazis. Zinn said, "the war in Europe was about over and everyone knew it." Well, I have to disagree with Mr. Zinn. A certain former paper hanger with a little mustache in Berlin didn't believe the war was over, as he sent more V-2 rockets into England in the hope he could get them to sign a peace treaty favorable to him and use his army to attack the Soviet Communists. Even the 2006 German language made-for-television movie "Dresden" talked about Hitler boasting in radio broadcasts of having a super weapon that could ensure victory for the Third Reich. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461658/ The Germans were working on an atomic bomb, had a rocket delivery system, the V-2, which could hit London with ease, and also had a jet plane, the Me262 that flew at 550 mph - but lacked fuel supplies. In the waning months of the war, a German U-boat carrying 1000 pounds of uranium for delivery to Japan surrendered to the US and was taken to the Portsmouth, NH, submarine base. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234 Because of scientific super weapons, nothing in the European Theater of World War II was settled until the surrender in Berlin. No one knew what it would take to get Hitler to surrender without any further fighting. But it seems as if Zinn is saying that this harsh use of napalm negated every other thing he, himself, and America did against the Third Reich. He appears to be a very conflicted man. Absent from his remarks were comments on why it was right -- or wrong -- for the Soviet Union to fight and kill during WWII and their bombing and artillery fire of largely civilian Berlin. Presumably if he thought it was right or understandable for the Soviets to bomb Germany because of the losses they suffered in the war, then why wasn't it right for a Howard Zinn, a Jew, to bomb German troops because of the losses the Jews suffered? The Soviet Union started their involvement by signing a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, yet that approach was destroyed with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Mr. Zinn's conflicts are more emotional and personal than ideological and logical. The sad truth is that a war is full of kill or be killed situations and full scale redefinitions of right and wrong. Survivors' remorse concerning the other side, such as Howard Zinn experienced, doesn't make the enemies overpowered any less intent in their desire to kill both soldiers and civilians, just incapable of doing so themselves. As is, Howard Zinn started a Zinn Education Project, ZEP, before his death, complete with support video featuring Hollywood stars. http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2010/02/03/howard-zinns-legacy-instructing-teachers-to-disobey-education-codes/ Adam Baldwin, in Breitbart's Big Hollywood, gives some details of what our children are now confronting. http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2010/02/03/howard-zinns-legacy-instructing-teachers-to-disobey-education-codes/ 'Questions from teachers and students across America already familiar with ZEP were solicited and presented to the professor. HPP Marketing Director Amy Baker and moderator Bigelow put the questions to professor Zinn. During the broadcast: * Professor Zinn explicitly advised teachers: “Don’t obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.” * Dr. Bigelow confirmed that ZEP’s materials have been smuggled into classrooms throughout the country by teachers who astro-turf Zinn’s “guerrilla warfare with the establishment.” END OF QUOTE Howard Zinn is dead but Zinn-ism, at were, is still very much alive and being taught in public schools - and I suspect some private schools as well.