Not swayed by Zinn.

• Author: Eno, R.D.
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Howard Zinn's weak and wandering rebuttal of the "case for war" ("A Just Cause, Not a Just War," December issue) left me wondering whether, in his view, war can ever, under any circumstances, be justified? Will Zinn adjure the American left to renounce its romantic attachment to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whose members surely believed a war in defense of Spanish loyalists was both just and necessary?

Zinn's suggestion that only a "small, focused act of violence against a monstrous, immediate evil would be justified" sounds like trying to eat your cake and have it, too. Can he, in the present case, tell us what a "small, focused act of violence" might look like? Can any of the war's critics on the left tell us how the U.S. might have mobilized some international tribunal to deal with perpetrators of the September 11 atrocity, or...