February 5, 2005

The governor of Colorado and the craven leadership of the University of Colorado have whipped up a bureaucratic witch-hunt against a tenured professor named Ward Churchill. This has come as no surprise to MIM, because Ward Churchill had badly hurt the u.$. imperialists with his past books on government documents related to FBI repression of the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party.

The new furor damages further an already government-financed academic institution--the University of Colorado and all similar state schools. The witch-hunt also fits the federal government's priorities--to blame someone else for its failures. Ward Churchill is a professor without state power who never had a chance to run the U.S. government and prevent 911. In fact, Ward Churchill and all advanced people like him suffer the frustrating risk of living in a country that allows its government to go to war after war. Unlike the vast majority who turn a blind eye and then claim shock when the war hits home, Ward Churchill knew what was going on and continued to live in a country that risked his and others' lives.

Now happily ignorant yokels are asking for Ward Churchill to lose his tenured post at the University of Colorado--instead of asking for the resignation of the many government officials with documented ties to Al-Qaeda including arms and finance ties. They wonder what right Churchill has to question all the risks that governments not of Ward Churchill's choosing heaped on him.

We ask Ward Churchill not to back down. He should fight this thing to the end, no matter how lop-sided and stupid the media may seem. He should not resign his post. Quite the contrary, the people who should resign are the ones who formed the committee to investigate him.

If a poll could be found revealing that a majority of the u.$. public knows anything about the wars the united $tates conducts around the world, including those relevant to 911, then, just maybe, an argument could start. As it stands, Ward Churchill's opponents barely deserve his reply.

The comparison of Amerikans to Nazis is even more apt than Ward Churchill has said, because the u.$. public knows and admits that the Nazis were engaged in a massive war. When engaged in a war and when fully dealing with that reality, a public does not demonstrate the shock so widespread in Amerika after 911. Shock is really proof of ignorance or a level of consciousness choosing to be uninformed. No one was shocked that the Nazi movement that lived by the sword died by the sword. Anyone who knew about u.$. wars around the globe should not have been shocked by retaliation. People who were not paying attention to international wars and politics before 911 like Ward Churchill was have no right to judge him now. It's not possible to have it both ways. People who want to stay uninformed should not claim to know what is right and cast stones at Ward Churchill.

January 31 2005 statement from Ward Churchill

http://www.colorado.edu/EthnicStudies/press_releases/ward_churchill_013105.html

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 “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.

These are the views of Ward Churchill, not the University of Colorado .