Review: A People’s History of the United States

This is Howard Zinn writing about the USA at the beginning of World War II:

For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs.  It has opposed the Haitian revolution for independence from France at the start of the nineteenth century.  It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country.  It has pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention.  It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos.  It had “opened” Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats.  It had declared an Open Door Policy in China as a means of assuring that the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China.  It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years.

Quite the record we had going there before we set out to “liberate” people in Europe and Asia in World War II.

Of course, the rhetoric shortly after the invasion of Iraq (after no WMDs were found) was to bring them “freedom” and “democracy”.    We brought the Iraqi people the freedom of the grave and the democracy of death.