Howard Zinn's Advice to Obama

On August 20th, I interviewed one of the most famous living historians, Howard Zinn, author of the best-selling People's History of the United States, a book that should be read by every American, on a wide range of subjects.

This article covers his Advice to Obama on how to win.

R.K. -Do you have any advice for Obama?  

H.Z. -Yes. I have advice for Obama. You want to win? - Speak boldly to the American people, the American people want to get out of Iraq. Speak boldly and say, "I'm going to withdraw from Iraq as fast as ships and planes can carry them"- , and I think that Obama will have a much better chance of winning the election because he will be speaking to the hearts of the American people, who really are sick of the war. And instead, he gives us these half-baked solutions about "I will withdraw in 16 months and will send some troops to Afghanistan and keep some troops in Iraq for security purposes."

Now that's - you know-- that's not what the American people want. And if he thinks he will win more votes by being moderate and centrist, I think he's wrong. So my advice to Obama, not just from the standpoint of being right, but even from the standpoint of being pragmatic and winning, is be bold - be bold on the war - be bold on having a single payer, government financed health system. Be bold on ending our position as a militarist nation. Obama is calling for a strong military - big military - he should stop doing that!

look for more excerpts from the interview appearing in coming days.

Thanks to James Magee 111 and Jay Farrington for transcribing the interview.

Listen to the full interview here, for a limited time:

Recording Download Link (Right-click the link and select "Save Link to Disk…") available until Sept. 19, 2008.

(If there's a free place to archive this kind of audio recording -- about 21 MB-- please drop me a note. )