We have three branches of government, with ‘checks and balances,’ as we were taught in junior high school.  But one branch of government (the presidency) gets us into wars and the other two (Congress and the Supreme Court) go sheepishly along.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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In 1932, Albert Einstein, already world famous for his work in physics and mathematics, wrote a letter to another distinguished thinker, Sigmund Freud.  Einstein was deeply troubled by the memory of World War I, which had ended only fourteen years before.  Ten million men had died on the battlefields of Europe, for reasons that no one could logically explain.  Like many others who had lived through that war, Einstein was horrified by the thought that human life could be destroyed on such a massive scale and worried that there might be another war.  He considered that Freud, the world’s leading psychologist, might throw light on the question ‘Why do men make war?’

“Dear Professor Freud,” he wrote.  “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”  Einstein spoke of “that small but determined group, active in every nation, composed of individuals who …  regard warfare, the manufacture and sale of arms, simply as an occasion to advance their personal interests and enlarge their personal authority.”  And then he asked, “How is it possible for this small clique to bend the will of the majority, who stand to lose and suffer by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions?”

Einstein volunteered an answer, “Because man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction.”  And then he put his final question to Freud, “Is it possible to control a man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness?”

Freud responded, “You surmise that man has in him an active instinct for hatred and destruction, amenable to such stimulations.  I entirely agree with you …. The most casual glance at world-history will show an unending series of conflicts between one community and another.”  Freud pointed to two fundamental instincts in human beings: the erotic, or love, instinct and its opposite, the destructive instinct.  But the only hope he could hold for the erotic triumphing over the destructive was in the cultural development of the human race, including “a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life.”

But what is Freud’s evidence for the existence of such an instinct?  There is something curious in his argument.  He offers no proof from the field of his expertise, psychology.  His evidence is in “the most casual glance at world-history.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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The distinguished biologist P.W. Medawar puts it this way, “By far the most important characteristic of human beings is that we have and exercise moral judgment and are not at the mercy of our hormones and genes.”

_

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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The seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, “I put forth a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”  This view of human nature led Hobbes to favor any kind of government, however authoritarian, that would keep the peace by blocking what he thought was the natural inclination of people to do violence to one another.  He talked about “the dissolute condition of masterless men” that required “a coercive power to tie their hands from rapine and revenge.”

Beliefs about human nature thus become self-fulfilling prophecies.  If you believe human beings are naturally violent and bad, you may be persuaded to think (although not required to think) that it is “realistic” to be that way yourself.  But is it indeed realistic (meaning, “I regret this, but it’s a fact ….”) to blame war on human nature.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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“Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences upon the human mind, the must vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences” – nineteenth century English philosopher John Stuart Mill.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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For the idea that any means – mass murder, the misuse of science, the corruption of professionalism – are acceptable to achieve the end of national power, the ultimate example of our time is Hiroshima.  For us, as citizens, the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggests that we reject Machiavelli, that we do not accept subservience, whether to princes or presidents, and that we examine for ourselves the ends of public policy to determine whose interests they really serve.  We must examine the means used to achieve those ends to decide if they are compatible with equal justice for all human beings on earth.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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The end of dropping the bomb seems, from the evidence, to have been not winning the war, which was already assured, not saving lives, for it was highly probable no American invasion would be necessary, but the aggrandizement of American national power at the moment and in the postwar period.  For this end, the means were among the most awful yet devised by human beings – burning people alive, maiming them horribly, leaving them with radiation sickness, which would kill them slowly and with great pain.

I remember my junior-high-school social studies teacher telling the class that the difference between a democracy like the United States and the “totalitarian states” was that “they believe that the end justifies any means, and we do not.”  But this was before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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In his detailed and eloquent history of the making of the bomb, Richard Rhodes says, “The bombs were authorized not because the Japanese refused to surrender but because they refused to surrender unconditionally.”

The one condition necessary for Japan to end the war was an agreement to maintain the sanctity of the Japanese emperor, who was a holy figure to the Japanese people.  Former ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, based on his knowledge of Japanese culture, had been trying to persuade the U.S. government of the importance of allowing the emperor to remain in place.

Herbert Feis, who had unique access to State Department files and to records on the Manhattan Project, noted that in the end the United States did give assurances the Japanese wanted on the emperor.  He writes, “The curious mind lingers over the reasons why the American government waited so long before offering the Japanese those various assurances which it did extend later.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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On August 2, the Japanese foreign office sent a message to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, “There are only a few days left in which to make arrangements to end the war…. As for the definite terms…. It is our intention to make the Potsdam Three-Power Declaration [which called for unconditional surrender] the basis of the study regarding these terms.”

Barton Bernstein, a Stanford historian who has studied the official documents closely, wrote,

This message, like earlier ones, was probably intercepted by American intelligence and decoded.  It had no effect on American policy.  There is no evidence that the message was sent to Truman and Byrnes [secretary of state], nor any evidence that they followed the intercepted messages during the Potsdam conference.  They were unwilling to take risks in order to save Japanese lives.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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On July 13, 1945, three days before the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, the United States intercepted Japanese Foreign Minister Togo’s secret cable to Ambassador Sato in Moscow, asking that he get the Soviets to intercede and indicating that Japan was ready to end the war, so long as it was not unconditional surrender.

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

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