The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill

[veganmomma]

July 12, 2007

The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill

Distortions of Acumen

 

By JOSHUA FRANK

 

The shameless trashing of Ward Churchill from the left side of our political setting was perhaps the most grotesque of all the attacks faced by the tenured University of Colorado professor after his essay "Some Push Back" began making headlines in early 2005. It was predictable that right-wingers like David Horowitz and pundit Sean Hannity would blather about Churchill being un-American, but the liberal loathing of the radical academic came with an extra unexpected fervor. Let's take Marc Cooper, contributing editor to The Nation magazine, whom, on his personal blog, responded to Churchill's 9/11 thesis:

 

"Move over, Mumia. The Left has a new cause celebre that's a guaranteed loser: Ward Churchill I saw the essay at the time and was nauseated by it. I have been tempted over the years to write something about it, but have always decided not to. Only because I consider Churchill to be an irrelevant and clearly deranged loner on the edge of the looniest left.

 

"Now I regret not having denounced him. Too bad others on the left also didn't quickly hurry to divorce themselves from this guy.

 

"Churchill, as you know, surfaced in the news last month when he was invited to speak at an upstate New York university and some conservatives raised a ruckus ­ as they damn well should. If this guy can hang on to his tenure at CU[,] fine. But damned if student funds from somewhere else should be used to host him as some sort of guest speaker."

 

It was the kind of cheap jab Cooper is famous for. He's spelled out all sorts of ad hominems over the years -- from the bashing of Mumia to the castration of Hugo Chavez -- Cooper claimed to have reread Churchill's essay, only to find "it more offensive than when I originally saw it right after 9/11." If one only read Cooper's grotesque distortions of Churchill's fiery analysis (thinking a liberal would at least give Ward a fair crack), they would most likely believe the professor deserves the filthy muck that has been shoveled all over his career.

 

What did Cooper find so offensive anyway? Most likely it was Churchill's commentary on the "technocrats" in the World Trade Center:

 

"If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

 

Churchill's Eichmann reference is what got him in deep shit with the likes of New York's Governor Pataki and Bill O'Reilly over at Fox News. Taken out of context, Churchill's remarks seem difficult to defend. When it stands alone, the aforementioned statement clearly seems to illustrate that Churchill praised the attacks of 9/11. But did he really champion the horrific atrocity?

 

Not exactly.

 

Prior to his Eichmann comment, Churchill used the following precursor to set up his case: " [The 9/11 terrorists] did not license themselves to 'target innocent civilians.'"

 

There you have it. Churchill was trying to make the argument that the 9/11 terrorists did not target the WTC simply to kill innocent Americans. According to him, the 9/11 attackers went after the WTC because it was a legitimate military target in an act of war. Plain and simple. Of course, Churchill should have clarified his position better in his original essay given the weight of his argument. (He defends and explains himself later, which we'll see in a moment.) But, unfortunately, his vagueness aroused a plethora of reactionary attacks, both from the right and left.

 

Churchill should have emboldened this "little Eichmann" argument in "Some Push Back" by pointing out that CIA offices were housed in the WTC 7, along with a large office of cruise missile manufacturer Raytheon in the Twin Towers. He could have also stressed that the terrorists likely attacked the WTC in hopes of inflicting a massive wound to the US economy, which is the driving force behind the violent war machine.

 

Even so, Cooper and many others who criticized Churchill's statement failed to point out that the professor, in his original essay, never argued the WTC attacks were morally justified. In fact, he said it was an act of war, which he detests. As Churchill wrote in "Some Push Back," "if what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war -- and they can -- then the same is true" for the US conduct in the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

From there he goes on to compare the terrorists to former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who oversaw the US-imposed UN sanctions of Iraq, which killed tens of thousands of people, mostly elderly and small children. "Evil -- for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept -- was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jabba the Hut, blandly spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon the unoffending youth of Iraq."

 

Does such a harsh critique of the US military actions, and Churchill's comparison of these ventures to the WTC attacks, imply that he is delighted people were killed on 9/11? Not in the least.

 

In fact, as noted, Churchill argues that these were not individual acts of terror (unless you also categorize US military activity as terror): "This is to say that, since the assaults on the WTC and Pentagon were an act of war -- not 'terrorist incidents' -- they must be understood as components in a much broader strategy designed to achieve specific results."

 

Of course, those results can be debated, and alleged al Qaeda operatives have since attacked many civilian centers in Europe and elsewhere since 2001. But on 9/11, perhaps they knew the US government would react violently, attacking countries in the Middle East -- which would only inflame more rage against the US and consequently aid in the recruitment of more fighters to sign up for bin Laden's jihad. Days after Cooper ripped into Churchill, the liberal newswire CommonDreams.org ran a bitter column entitled "Ward Churchill's Banality of Evil" by Anthony Lappé. Like our pal Cooper, Lappé, who I consider a friend, argued that the prof's critique of 9/11 was utterly reprehensible:

 

"Consider the professor's twisted logic: People who work in the financial industry are legitimate military targets. Where do you draw the line? What about the secretaries who serve coffee to the little Eichmanns? They keep the evil system caffeinated, should they die? What if you own stock? Does earning dividends on GE mean your apartment building should be leveled with you in it? What if you keep your money at Chase or Citibank? Buy stuff at Wal-Mart? Pay federal taxes? Or better yet, what if you work for the government? Churchill himself works for a state university. He takes a paycheck from an institution that in all likelihood does military research and is probably ten times more complicit in the actual machinery of war than any junior currency trader."

 

To start, Churchill never actually said that WTC workers should be legitimate targets. Rather, he said that using the US government's own rationale, the WTC would most likely be a target for a military attack -- for if no other reason than it housed a large CIA office and was an economic bastion of the military-industrial complex.

 

Arguing that the WTC would be a justifiable military target using the US government's bloody rationale, Churchill wrote in "Some People Push Back":

 

"[The WTC] formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire -- the 'mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved -- and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to 'ignorance' -- a derivative, after all, of the word 'ignore' -- counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in -- and in many cases excelling at -- it was because of their absolute refusal to see."

 

Lappé (and CommonDreams, by association) really got off track when he implied that Churchill somehow condoned the attacks on the WTC attack and the Pentagon. In response to misinterpretations such as Lappé's, Churchill lays it out quite clearly in his essay, "Lessons Not Learned and the War on Free Speech":

 

"It should be emphasized that I applied the 'little Eichmanns' characterization only to those described as 'technicians.' Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-11 attack. According to Pentagon logic, was simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name."

 

The fuzzy nature of "collateral damage" is what I think Churchill was really getting at. And Churchill's rejoinder to critics was only clarifying his earlier position, not backpedaling, as Lappé contested. Indeed, Churchill sees the WTC attack as it was -- "ugly" and "hurtful." He also thinks such militaristic conceptions, when applied to other US ventures such as Iraq and Palestine, are also "ugly" and "hurtful."

 

This isn't "twisted logic," as Lappé puts it. Or rather, it isn't Churchill's "twisted logic," but the "twisted logic" of the US military establishment. Churchill simply took the WTC massacre, looked at it through the lens of the US government, and pointed out why the attack on the WTC could be justified militarily. Nowhere in Churchill's original essay did he state such a terrorist act was morally justified.

 

And there's the key point. The attacks on the WTC weren't right, but malicious and iniquitous. Churchill's larger parallel is what critics like Lappé seem unable to stomach: that the US "military" interventions can also be classified as "terror." Churchill's argument, despite what Cooper and Lappé claimed, was, and is, sound. Does his interest "in hearing about" other ways and places the terrorists could have struck to inflict some "penalty ... upon the little Eichmanns" still bother you?

 

His question, to me, seems to express that if the assault on the WTC was only about killing innocents, then how can one ignore the fact that the WTC 7 housed a CIA office and a weapons producer like Raytheon? Was this irrelevant, or just coincidental? Like it or not, Churchill forced us to address his claim that the WTC was a military target.

 

In "Lessons Not Learned and the War on Free Speech," Churchill again clarifies,

 

"I am not a 'defender' of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, 'Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.'

 

"This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world

 

"Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as 'Nazis.' What I said was that the 'technocrats of empire' working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of 'little Eichmanns.' Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies."

 

Now back to Cooper, who wrote that he would "be terrified if this guy was teaching [his] kid." First, Cooper made no mention of Churchill's counter essay in his online screed, even though he has "kept half-an-eye on Churchill since" his original essay first appeared. We can certainly call Cooper's smarmy blindness selective perception, for he wants to see what he wants to see.

 

This leads us to the much larger issue at hand -- the implications for tenured professors and academics who publicly voice their objectionable political and cultural opinions. What is now happening to Ward Churchill is pure intimidation, spearheaded by Republican Gov. Pataki, exacerbated by Fox News and David Horowitz, and condoned by liberals such as Cooper.

 

The current battle over whether Churchill keeps his post at Colorado University, along with the Norman Finkelstein and David Graeber cases at DePaul and Yale respectively -- is setting the bar for a whole assembly of radical intellectuals who could one day become the target of McCarthy-like censorship. It's time to move past Ward Churchill's fearless thesis about the US Empire and fight for his right to voice his opinions publicly. No matter how unsavory they may be.

 

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.

[veganmomma]

Here's the link to the article

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank07122007.html

[Guest]

Thank you veganmomma for posting this. Do you ever work with the folks from International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal in Philadelphia who are fighting for Mumia? I met Pam Africa from the group a few weeks ago, which was really nice.

 

That quote from Marc Cooper of the Nation is offensive. I help out with the Pittsburgh Committee to Free Mumia. We are holding a fundraiser/outreach event on July 27 to raise awareness about Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is a Political Prisoner and a fearless advocate for the oppressed world-wide. Mumia is held on Death Row in a prison not far from where I live. People in the Mumia group visit him every other week, so they know Mumia and other prisoners personally. Mumia was sentenced to death by a racist jugde and a racist system, and he represents thousands of other Black men wasting away in these warehouses primarily because of the color of their skin.

 

I cannot fathom how someone who is a contributing editor for a supposedly "progressive" publication could term Mumia a "cause celebre that's a guaranteed loser." Why is Mumia Abu-Jamal, or Ward Churchill for that matter, a "guaranteed loser"? Is this because Mumia is Black and Churchill is Indigenous, and that they write and speak on the oppression of people of color? I think the answer is yes. Marc Cooper must know, consciously or unconsciously, that the mainstream liberals in the U.S. who read his blog or the Nation don't want to have to grapple with the topics discussed by Mumia and Churchill, let alone the oppression that these two are currently experiencing. Furthermore, they are willing to be complicit in the racism that is inherently a part of the U.S. (in)justice system and academia.

 

When Cooper writes, "But damned if student funds from somewhere else should be used to host [Churchill] as some sort of guest speaker." Cooper is adding his voice to the growing conservative movement attacking the use of college funding to host speakers on politically correct topics such as animal rights, anti-racism, environmentalism, feminism, etc. Here Cooper sounds just like folks from the John Birch Society or Rush Limbaugh. In fact, until these reactionaries misappropriated the term in furtherance of the conservative backlash "politically correct" was a positive term. Perhaps Marc Cooper will use "feminazi" in a future blog posting.

[Guest]

Thing is...Churchill should have never gotten the job to begin with. It was a job open to Native Americans. They were trying to fill the spot and he lied to get it.

[Guest]

This isn't really about Ward Churchill's ancestry. This all came about because of something Churchill wrote that was critical of the imperialist U.S. foreign policy. It's only after Churchill became a target of the conservative ideologues like Bill O'Reilly that this whole business of ancestry came up.

 

Anyway, how did Ward Churchill lie exactly? A lie is an intentionally false statement. What Churchill was told by his own mother was that their family ancestor, Joshua Tyner, was Cherokee. This is something that many of Churchill's relatives also strongly believe.

 

Is the ancestry of everyone who teaches Native American Studies, African-American Studies, Asian-American Studies, Latino/a Studies to be taken as a subject of investigation? That sure privileges those who are of European-decent and teach on Eurocentric subjects, which, by the way, is the majority of courses at U.S. colleges and universities--hence why these other academic programs were created. Yet professors of say "classical civilization" (i.e. Europe studies) don't have to prove their ancestry.

 

The upshot is unequal treatment and differential allocations of resources to individuals who are scholars of a particular academic field--that is, studies concerning people of color. This is intended. The people who initiated the attack on Churchill have an agenda to eliminate academic programs that are not Eurocentric (and Eurocentric includes European-descendants in the U.S. and Australia).

 

It's important to remember what Churchill wrote about that made him a target in the first place. This isn't just about the academics. Those people attacking Churchill want to increase the global dominance of Europeans and people of European-decent. The United States is an occupying nation on land that was stolen from Indigenous people. The same ideology that was used to colonize the Eastern Seaboard, expand into the Western Territory and annex half of Mexico, as well as Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands is now being used to occupy Iraq and further plans to attack Iran. Churchill calls that ideology into question, and that's why he's being attacked.

[Guest]

I know thats not what its about but he's been given so many strikes. This is just another straw...another last straw. Churchill isn't native American...he never was. It reminds me of The Jerk...when Steve Martin grew up black. Churchill applied for a position that was only available for Native Americans. I don't feel its in good judgment to apply for a position like that unless you are at least mostly Native American...he also played up his Native American status. A far cry from honesty for an ethics professor. Anyway they were trying to bring diversity to the department and he applied for a position he wasn't going to fill properly. Its rumored that he also lied about having a PhD when he applied for the position...however the documents aren't available any longer(disappearing evidence somehow). He was given an honorary doctorate 2 years after he received the position...which is very sketchy. Its very rare to get tenure with only an MA after such a short time.

Anyhow I couldn't ethically apply for a position asking specifically for an Asian teacher. I'm half asian but didn't really grow up in a truly Asian household and I'd consider myself a lier if I did that...I think many others would as well...especially if I were teaching ethics. It kind of reminds me of the senator(Gates I think but maybe I'm wrong) that was on a committee for sexual abuse of children and was caught sending sexual messages to underage volunteers in the RNC.

[veganmomma]

Some People Push Back-Ward Churchill

The essay on this page was expanded into a full-length book - Ward Churchill's Book "On The Justice of Roosting Chickens"

http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html

 

When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well.

 

The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable – in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival.

 

If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough – and it should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of "civilized" behavior – the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers.

 

All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered – are still suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and psychological trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.

 

The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving" father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the 24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to gain a sense of how much they knew.

 

In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what was happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps 100,000 "towel-heads" and "camel jockeys" – or was it "sand niggers" that week? – in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless, many of them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single day by jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance. It was a performance worthy of the nazis during the early months of their drive into Russia. And it should be borne in mind that Good Germans gleefully cheered that butchery, too. Indeed, support for Hitler suffered no serious erosion among Germany's "innocent civilians" until the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943.

 

There may be a real utility to reflecting further, this time upon the fact that it was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed – nay, empowered – their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name.

 

If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to Good Americans as it was the Good Germans. And the price exacted from the Germans for the faultiness of their moral fiber was truly ghastly. Returning now to the children, and to the effects of the post-Gulf War embargo – continued bull force by Bush the Elder's successors in the Clinton administration as a gesture of its "resolve" to finalize what George himself had dubbed the "New World Order" of American military/economic domination – it should be noted that not one but two high United Nations officials attempting to coordinate delivery of humanitarian aid to Iraq resigned in succession as protests against US policy.

 

One of them, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halladay, repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic program . . . of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the New York Times and other papers during the fall of 1998, so it can hardly be contended that the American public was "unaware" of them. Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly confirmed Halladay's assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV program Meet the Press to respond to his "allegations," she calmly announced that she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that U.S. objectives were achieved.

 

The Politics of a Perpetrator Population

As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations with yawns.. There were, after all, far more pressing things than the unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be concerned with. Getting "Jeremy" and "Ellington" to their weekly soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little "Tiffany" and "Ashley" had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays – for "our kids," no less – as an all-absorbing point of political focus.

 

In fairness, it must be admitted that there was an infinitesimally small segment of the body politic who expressed opposition to what was/is being done to the children of Iraq. It must also be conceded, however, that those involved by-and-large contented themselves with signing petitions and conducting candle-lit prayer vigils, bearing "moral witness" as vast legions of brown-skinned five-year-olds sat shivering in the dark, wide-eyed in horror, whimpering as they expired in the most agonizing ways imaginable.

 

Be it said as well, and this is really the crux of it, that the "resistance" expended the bulk of its time and energy harnessed to the systemically-useful task of trying to ensure, as "a principle of moral virtue" that nobody went further than waving signs as a means of "challenging" the patently exterminatory pursuit of Pax Americana. So pure of principle were these "dissidents," in fact, that they began literally to supplant the police in protecting corporations profiting by the carnage against suffering such retaliatory "violence" as having their windows broken by persons less "enlightened" – or perhaps more outraged – than the self-anointed "peacekeepers."

 

Property before people, it seems – or at least the equation of property to people – is a value by no means restricted to America's boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort zone "pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black block after it ever so slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in Seattle.

 

Small wonder, all-in-all, that people elsewhere in the world – the Mideast, for instance – began to wonder where, exactly, aside from the streets of the US itself, one was to find the peace America's purportedly oppositional peacekeepers claimed they were keeping.

 

The answer, surely, was plain enough to anyone unblinded by the kind of delusions engendered by sheer vanity and self-absorption. So, too, were the implications in terms of anything changing, out there, in America's free-fire zones.

 

Tellingly, it was at precisely this point – with the genocide in Iraq officially admitted and a public response demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were virtually no Americans, including most of those professing otherwise, doing anything tangible to stop it – that the combat teams which eventually commandeered the aircraft used on September 11 began to infiltrate the United States.

 

 

Meet the "Terrorists"

Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following their successful operation on September 11.

 

They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."

 

A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" – now proudly emblematized by the United States – against the "Islamic East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered "Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war – and they can – then the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.

 

That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and restraint.

 

They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."

 

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

 

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

 

The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were not "cowards." That distinction properly belongs to the "firm-jawed lads" who delighted in flying stealth aircraft through the undefended airspace of Baghdad, dropping payload after payload of bombs on anyone unfortunate enough to be below – including tens of thousands of genuinely innocent civilians – while themselves incurring all the risk one might expect during a visit to the local video arcade. Still more, the word describes all those "fighting men and women" who sat at computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, enjoying air-conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into neighborhoods filled with random human beings. Whatever else can be said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in attaining their objectives.

 

Nor were they "fanatics" devoted to "Islamic fundamentalism."

 

One might rightly describe their actions as "desperate." Feelings of desperation, however, are a perfectly reasonable – one is tempted to say "normal" – emotional response among persons confronted by the mass murder of their children, particularly when it appears that nobody else really gives a damn (ask a Jewish survivor about this one, or, even more poignantly, for all the attention paid them, a Gypsy).

 

That desperate circumstances generate desperate responses is no mysterious or irrational principle, of the sort motivating fanatics. Less is it one peculiar to Islam. Indeed, even the FBI's investigative reports on the combat teams' activities during the months leading up to September 11 make it clear that the members were not fundamentalist Muslims. Rather, it's pretty obvious at this point that they were secular activists – soldiers, really – who, while undoubtedly enjoying cordial relations with the clerics of their countries, were motivated far more by the grisly realities of the U.S. war against them than by a set of religious beliefs.

 

And still less were they/their acts "insane."

 

Insanity is a condition readily associable with the very American idea that one – or one's country – holds what amounts to a "divine right" to commit genocide, and thus to forever do so with impunity. The term might also be reasonably applied to anyone suffering genocide without attempting in some material way to bring the process to a halt. Sanity itself, in this frame of reference, might be defined by a willingness to try and destroy the perpetrators and/or the sources of their ability to commit their crimes. (Shall we now discuss the US "strategic bombing campaign" against Germany during World War II, and the mental health of those involved in it?)

 

Which takes us to official characterizations of the combat teams as an embodiment of "evil."

 

Evil – for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept – was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt, blandly spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon the unoffending youth of Iraq. Evil was to be heard in that great American hero "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf's utterly dehumanizing dismissal of their systematic torture and annihilation as mere "collateral damage." Evil, moreover, is a term appropriate to describing the mentality of a public that finds such perspectives and the policies attending them acceptable, or even momentarily tolerable.

 

Had it not been for these evils, the counterattacks of September 11 would never have occurred. And unless "the world is rid of such evil," to lift a line from George Junior, September 11 may well end up looking like a lark.

 

There is no reason, after all, to believe that the teams deployed in the assaults on the WTC and the Pentagon were the only such, that the others are composed of "Arabic-looking individuals" – America's indiscriminately lethal arrogance and psychotic sense of self-entitlement have long since given the great majority of the world's peoples ample cause to be at war with it – or that they are in any way dependent upon the seizure of civilian airliners to complete their missions.

 

To the contrary, there is every reason to expect that there are many other teams in place, tasked to employ altogether different tactics in executing operational plans at least as well-crafted as those evident on September 11, and very well equipped for their jobs. This is to say that, since the assaults on the WTC and Pentagon were act of war – not "terrorist incidents" – they must be understood as components in a much broader strategy designed to achieve specific results. From this, it can only be adduced that there are plenty of other components ready to go, and that they will be used, should this become necessary in the eyes of the strategists. It also seems a safe bet that each component is calibrated to inflict damage at a level incrementally higher than the one before (during the 1960s, the Johnson administration employed a similar policy against Vietnam, referred to as "escalation").

 

Since implementation of the overall plan began with the WTC/Pentagon assaults, it takes no rocket scientist to decipher what is likely to happen next, should the U.S. attempt a response of the inexcusable variety to which it has long entitled itself.

 

About Those Boys (and Girls) in the Bureau

There's another matter begging for comment at this point. The idea that the FBI's "counterterrorism task forces" can do a thing to prevent what will happen is yet another dimension of America's delusional pathology.. The fact is that, for all its publicly-financed "image-building" exercises, the Bureau has never shown the least aptitude for anything of the sort.

 

Oh, yeah, FBI counterintelligence personnel have proven quite adept at framing anarchists, communists and Black Panthers, sometimes murdering them in their beds or the electric chair. The Bureau's SWAT units have displayed their ability to combat child abuse in Waco by burning babies alive, and its vaunted Crime Lab has been shown to pad its "crime-fighting' statistics by fabricating evidence against many an alleged car thief. But actual "heavy-duty bad guys" of the sort at issue now? This isn't a Bruce Willis/Chuck Norris/Sly Stallone movie, after all.. And J. Edgar Hoover doesn't get to approve either the script or the casting.

 

The number of spies, saboteurs and bona fide terrorists apprehended, or even detected by the FBI in the course of its long and slimy history could be counted on one's fingers and toes. On occasion, its agents have even turned out to be the spies, and, in many instances, the terrorists as well.

 

To be fair once again, if the Bureau functions as at best a carnival of clowns where its "domestic security responsibilities" are concerned, this is because – regardless of official hype – it has none. It is now, as it's always been, the national political police force, an instrument created and perfected to ensure that all Americans, not just the consenting mass, are "free" to do exactly as they're told.

 

The FBI and "cooperating agencies" can be thus relied upon to set about "protecting freedom" by destroying whatever rights and liberties were left to U.S. citizens before September 11 (in fact, they've already received authorization to begin). Sheeplike, the great majority of Americans can also be counted upon to bleat their approval, at least in the short run, believing as they always do that the nasty implications of what they're doing will pertain only to others.

 

Oh Yeah, and "The Company," Too

A possibly even sicker joke is the notion, suddenly in vogue, that the CIA will be able to pinpoint "terrorist threats," "rooting out their infrastructure" where it exists and/or "terminating" it before it can materialize, if only it's allowed to beef up its "human intelligence gathering capacity" in an unrestrained manner (including full-bore operations inside the US, of course).

 

Yeah. Right.

 

Since America has a collective attention-span of about 15 minutes, a little refresher seems in order: "The Company" had something like a quarter-million people serving as "intelligence assets" by feeding it information in Vietnam in 1968, and it couldn't even predict the Tet Offensive. God knows how many spies it was fielding against the USSR at the height of Ronald Reagan's version of the Cold War, and it was still caught flatfooted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As to destroying "terrorist infrastructures," one would do well to remember Operation Phoenix, another product of its open season in Vietnam. In that one, the CIA enlisted elite US units like the Navy Seals and Army Special Forces, as well as those of friendly countries – the south Vietnamese Rangers, for example, and Australian SAS – to run around "neutralizing" folks targeted by The Company's legion of snitches as "guerrillas" (as those now known as "terrorists" were then called).

 

Sound familiar?

 

Upwards of 40,000 people – mostly bystanders, as it turns out – were murdered by Phoenix hit teams before the guerrillas, stronger than ever, ran the US and its collaborators out of their country altogether. And these are the guys who are gonna save the day, if unleashed to do their thing in North America?

 

The net impact of all this "counterterrorism" activity upon the combat teams' ability to do what they came to do, of course, will be nil.

 

Instead, it's likely to make it easier for them to operate (it's worked that way in places like Northern Ireland). And, since denying Americans the luxury of reaping the benefits of genocide in comfort was self-evidently a key objective of the WTC/Pentagon assaults, it can be stated unequivocally that a more overt display of the police state mentality already pervading this country simply confirms the magnitude of their victory.

 

On Matters of Proportion and Intent

As things stand, including the 1993 detonation at the WTC, "Arab terrorists" have responded to the massive and sustained American terror bombing of Iraq with a total of four assaults by explosives inside the US. That's about 1% of the 50,000 bombs the Pentagon announced were rained on Baghdad alone during the Gulf War (add in Oklahoma City and you'll get something nearer an actual 1%).

 

They've managed in the process to kill about 5,000 Americans, or roughly 1% of the dead Iraqi children (the percentage is far smaller if you factor in the killing of adult Iraqi civilians, not to mention troops butchered as/after they'd surrendered and/or after the "war-ending" ceasefire had been announced).

 

In terms undoubtedly more meaningful to the property/profit-minded American mainstream, they've knocked down a half-dozen buildings – albeit some very well-chosen ones – as opposed to the "strategic devastation" visited upon the whole of Iraq, and punched a $100 billion hole in the earnings outlook of major corporate shareholders, as opposed to the U.S. obliteration of Iraq's entire economy.

 

With that, they've given Americans a tiny dose of their own medicine.. This might be seen as merely a matter of "vengeance" or "retribution," and, unquestionably, America has earned it, even if it were to add up only to something so ultimately petty.

 

The problem is that vengeance is usually framed in terms of "getting even," a concept which is plainly inapplicable in this instance. As the above data indicate, it would require another 49,996 detonations killing 495,000 more Americans, for the "terrorists" to "break even" for the bombing of Baghdad/extermination of Iraqi children alone. And that's to achieve "real number" parity. To attain an actual proportional parity of damage – the US is about 15 times as large as Iraq in terms of population, even more in terms of territory – they would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and kill something on the order of 7.5 million people.

 

Were this the intent of those who've entered the US to wage war against it, it would remain no less true that America and Americans were only receiving the bill for what they'd already done. Payback, as they say, can be a real motherfucker (ask the Germans). There is, however, no reason to believe that retributive parity is necessarily an item on the agenda of those who planned the WTC/Pentagon operation. If it were, given the virtual certainty that they possessed the capacity to have inflicted far more damage than they did, there would be a lot more American bodies lying about right now.

 

Hence, it can be concluded that ravings carried by the "news" media since September 11 have contained at least one grain of truth: The peoples of the Mideast "aren't like" Americans, not least because they don't "value life' in the same way. By this, it should be understood that Middle-Easterners, unlike Americans, have no history of exterminating others purely for profit, or on the basis of racial animus. Thus, we can appreciate the fact that they value life – all lives, not just their own – far more highly than do their U.S. counterparts.

 

The Makings of a Humanitarian Strategy

In sum one can discern a certain optimism – it might even be call humanitarianism – imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over the very limited actions conducted on September 11.

 

Their logic seems to have devolved upon the notion that the American people have condoned what has been/is being done in their name – indeed, are to a significant extent actively complicit in it – mainly because they have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

 

Now they do.

 

That was the "medicinal" aspect of the attacks.

 

To all appearances, the idea is now to give the tonic a little time to take effect, jolting Americans into the realization that the sort of pain they're now experiencing first-hand is no different from – or the least bit more excruciating than – that which they've been so cavalier in causing others, and thus to respond appropriately.

 

More bluntly, the hope was – and maybe still is – that Americans, stripped of their presumed immunity from incurring any real consequences for their behavior, would comprehend and act upon a formulation as uncomplicated as "stop killing our kids, if you want your own to be safe."

 

Either way, it's a kind of "reality therapy" approach, designed to afford the American people a chance to finally "do the right thing" on their own, without further coaxing.

 

Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith fashion – a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and doing whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the sanctions on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's abundant supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly to mind, as do Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and George the Elder) – there is every reason to expect that military operations against the US on its domestic front would be immediately suspended.

 

Whether they would remain so would of course be contingent upon follow-up. By that, it may be assumed that American acceptance of onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction of its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice.

 

Since they've shown no sign of being unreasonable or vindictive, it may even be anticipated that, after a suitable period of adjustment and reeducation (mainly to allow them to acquire the skills necessary to living within their means), those restored to control over their own destinies by the gallant sacrifices of the combat teams the WTC and Pentagon will eventually (re)admit Americans to the global circle of civilized societies. Stranger things have happened.

 

In the Alternative

Unfortunately, noble as they may have been, such humanitarian aspirations were always doomed to remain unfulfilled. For it to have been otherwise, a far higher quality of character and intellect would have to prevail among average Americans than is actually the case. Perhaps the strategists underestimated the impact a couple of generations-worth of media indoctrination can produce in terms of demolishing the capacity of human beings to form coherent thoughts. Maybe they forgot to factor in the mind-numbing effects of the indoctrination passed off as education in the US. Then, again, it's entirely possible they were aware that a decisive majority of American adults have been reduced by this point to a level much closer to the kind of immediate self-gratification entailed in Pavlovian stimulus/response patterns than anything accessible by appeals to higher logic, and still felt morally obliged to offer the dolts an option to quit while they were ahead.

 

What the hell? It was worth a try.

 

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that the dosage of medicine administered was entirely insufficient to accomplish its purpose.

 

Although there are undoubtedly exceptions, Americans for the most part still don't get it.

 

Already, they've desecrated the temporary tomb of those killed in the WTC, staging a veritable pep rally atop the mangled remains of those they profess to honor, treating the whole affair as if it were some bizarre breed of contact sport. And, of course, there are the inevitable pom-poms shaped like American flags, the school colors worn as little red-white-and-blue ribbons affixed to labels, sportscasters in the form of "counterterrorism experts" drooling mindless color commentary during the pregame warm-up.

 

Refusing the realization that the world has suddenly shifted its axis, and that they are therefore no longer "in charge," they have by-and-large reverted instantly to type, working themselves into their usual bloodlust on the now obsolete premise that the bloodletting will "naturally" occur elsewhere and to someone else.

 

"Patriotism," a wise man once observed, "is the last refuge of scoundrels."

 

And the braided, he might of added.

 

Braided Scoundrel-in-Chief, George Junior, lacking even the sense to be careful what he wished for, has teamed up with a gaggle of fundamentalist Christian clerics like Billy Graham to proclaim a "New Crusade" called "Infinite Justice" aimed at "ridding the world of evil."

 

One could easily make light of such rhetoric, remarking upon how unseemly it is for a son to threaten his father in such fashion – or a president to so publicly contemplate the murder/suicide of himself and his cabinet – but the matter is deadly serious.

 

They are preparing once again to sally forth for the purpose of roasting brown-skinned children by the scores of thousands. Already, the B-1 bombers and the aircraft carriers and the missile frigates are en route, the airborne divisions are gearing up to go.

 

To where? Afghanistan?

 

The Sudan?

 

Iraq, again (or still)?

 

How about Grenada (that was fun)?

 

Any of them or all. It doesn't matter.

 

The desire to pummel the helpless runs rabid as ever.

 

Only, this time it's different.

 

The time the helpless aren't, or at least are not so helpless as they were.

 

This time, somewhere, perhaps in an Afghani mountain cave, possibly in a Brooklyn basement, maybe another local altogether – but somewhere, all the same – there's a grim-visaged (wo)man wearing a Clint Eastwood smile.

 

"Go ahead, punks," s/he's saying, "Make my day."

 

And when they do, when they launch these airstrikes abroad – or may a little later; it will be at a time conforming to the "terrorists"' own schedule, and at a place of their choosing – the next more intensive dose of medicine administered here "at home."

 

Of what will it consist this time? Anthrax? Mustard gas? Sarin? A tactical nuclear device?

 

That, too, is their choice to make.

 

Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor, Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club.

 

"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people around, some people push back."

 

As they should.

 

As they must.

 

And as they undoubtedly will.

 

There is justice in such symmetry.

[Guest]

I know thats not what its about but he's been given so many strikes. This is just another straw...another last straw. Churchill isn't native American...he never was. It reminds me of The Jerk...when Steve Martin grew up black. Churchill applied for a position that was only available for Native Americans. I don't feel its in good judgment to apply for a position like that unless you are at least mostly Native American...he also played up his Native American status. A far cry from honesty for an ethics professor. Anyway they were trying to bring diversity to the department and he applied for a position he wasn't going to fill properly. Its rumored that he also lied about having a PhD when he applied for the position...however the documents aren't available any longer(disappearing evidence somehow). He was given an honorary doctorate 2 years after he received the position...which is very sketchy. Its very rare to get tenure with only an MA after such a short time.

Anyhow I couldn't ethically apply for a position asking specifically for an Asian teacher. I'm half asian but didn't really grow up in a truly Asian household and I'd consider myself a lier if I did that...I think many others would as well...especially if I were teaching ethics. It kind of reminds me of the senator(Gates I think but maybe I'm wrong) that was on a committee for sexual abuse of children and was caught sending sexual messages to underage volunteers in the RNC.

I'm not saying that I don't have a problem with Ward Churchill pretending to be an Indian. I actually do think there are a number of problems with that. I also think Churchill has taken advantage of a racist system that privileges his whiteness. So this is a case of Churchill being in a position to critique racism and the genocide of Native Americans and actually contributing to it. That is, Ward Churchill took a spot that should have gone to a Native American, but didn't. This means Churchill played a role in the displacement of Native Americans, which is related to the pattern of genocide experienced by Native Americans. In this way I think we might actually be in agrement. I just think that is an issue that needs to be addressed in it's own context. But I think you sort of said that when you wrote, "I know thats not what its about."

[Guest]

The big thing is that he makes liberals look bad. We have been trying to be the honest ones that want equal play for all and to hold people accountable(including the successful and wealthy). This is no different than the televangelist getting caught gambling, cheating on wives etc. Its gives too much fire power to the other side. Thing is...most of the time when this happens theres a huge backlash on conservatives but no on liberals.