[antiwar-van] Ward Churchill under Attack

[No One is Illegal-Vancouver]

After finding himself at the center of a media
firestorm-and receiving a barrage of death threats-AK
Press author, Ward Churchill, has stepped down from
his position as Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department
at the University of Colorado. Not satisfied with
this, Colorado Governor Bill Owens is demanding that
Ward resign his position as a tenured professor as
well.

The controversy is based on an essay Ward wrote soon
after 9-11, which he later expanded into an AK Press
book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections
on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and
Criminality. Conservative protestors used the essay to
force Hamilton College in New York to cancel a
speaking engagement Ward had scheduled there. The
mainstream media (including Bill O'Reilly and Fox
News) has picked up the story, distorting and
misrepresenting the facts, as usual.

============================


Ward Churchill's Press Release:

January 31, 2005

In the last few days there has been widespread and
grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my
analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has
resulted in defamation of my character and threats
against my life. What I actually said has been lost,
indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope
the following facts will be reported at least to the
same extent that the fabrications have been.

The piece circulating on the internet was developed
into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most
of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military
interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of
international law since World War II. My point is that
we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our
name, to engage in massive violations of international
law and fundamental human rights and not expect to
reap the consequences.

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. My
feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967
Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of
urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could
never again raise my voice against the violence of the
oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to
the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -
my own government."

In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN
and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not
dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a
result of economic sanctions, but stated on national
television that "we" had decided it was "worth the
cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11
attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi
children, the more than 3 million people killed in the
war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions
of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America,
the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the
indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal
policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the
deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness
to American deaths.

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.

It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military
target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World
Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S.
Defense Department spokespersons have consistently
sought to justify target selection in places like
Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American
"command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly
civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself
into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S.
military doctrine, as announced in briefing after
briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were
nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more
than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is
prepared to accept these "standards" when the are
routinely applied to other people, they should be not
be surprised when the same standards are applied to
them.

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 9-1-1 attack.
According to Pentagon logic, were 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 bottom line of my argument is that the best and
perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the
U.S. is for American citizens to compel their
government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson
of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but
our obligation. To the extent we shirk this
responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the
1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have
no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the
consequences. This, of course, includes me,
personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone
else.

These points are clearly stated and documented in my
book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which
recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer
Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights.
Some people will, of course, disagree with my
analysis, but it presents questions that must be
addressed in academic and public debate if we are to
find a real solution to the violence that pervades
today's world. The gross distortions of what I
actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to
distract the public from the real issues at hand and
to further stifle freedom of speech and academic
debate in this country.

Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
January 31, 2005