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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 9/11 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 9/11-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.
This statement from Ward Churchill was posted on the
University of Colorado's Web site under the Department of Ethnic Studies
Comments? Send a letter to the editor.Albion Monitor
January 31, 2005 (http://www.albionmonitor.com)All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format.
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