Howard Zinn is the author of, most notably, "A People's History of the United States", a National-Book-Award-nominated text that investigates US history from the standpoint of the oppressed.Other books by Zinn include "Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology" and his 1995 autobiography, "You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train".
Published on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 by Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera speaks to Howard Zinn, the author, American historian, social critic and activist, about how the Iraq war damaged attitudes towards the US and why the US "empire" is close to collapse.
Q: Where is the United States heading in terms of world power and influence?
HZ: America has been heading - for some time, and is heading right now - toward less and less world power, less and less influence.
Obviously, since the war in Iraq, the rest of the world has fallen away from the United States, and if American foreign policy continues in the way it has been - that is aggressive and violent and uncaring about the feelings and thoughts of other people - then the influence of the United States is going to decline more and more.
This is an empire which is on the one hand the most powerful empire that ever existed; on the other hand an empire that is crumbling - an empire that has no future ... because the rest of the world is alienated and simply because this empire is top-heavy with military commitments, with bases around the world, with the exhaustion of its own resources at home.
[This is] leading to more and more discontent and home, so I think the American empire will go the way of other empires and I think it is on its way now.
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