{"id":7569,"date":"2005-02-02T07:16:55","date_gmt":"2005-02-02T14:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/02\/02\/the-right-to-be-an-asshole.html"},"modified":"2005-02-02T07:16:55","modified_gmt":"2005-02-02T14:16:55","slug":"the_right_to_be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/02\/the_right_to_be.html","title":{"rendered":"The Right to be an Asshole"},"content":{"rendered":"

CU professor Ward Churchill is in hot water over his<\/a> analysis<\/a> of the 9\/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

In a paper called “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” Churchill wrote: “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.”<\/p>\n

[…] He also asserted that the nearly 3,000 people killed at the World Trade Center worked for “the mighty engine of profit” but chose to ignore their role. “True enough, they were civilians of a sort,” he wrote. “But innocent? Gimme a break.”<\/p>\n

[…] Churchill said Eichmann was a technocrat who “crunched numbers” and made the trains that carried Jews to death camps run on time. And likewise, he said Thursday, those in the Trade Center were technocrats whose work was just as deadly.<\/p>\n

The full essay<\/a> also compares the defeat of the Iraqi army in 1991 to the attack on Russia by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the American public who cheered that rout as being the same as the Germans who supported Hitler until he started losing in 1943. And … well, here’s the “money paragraph”:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And those are some of the less <\/em>inflammatory bits from the “stream-of-conscience” essay.<\/p>\n

Churchill subsequently backed down — a bit — from his position, granting that the janitors and food service workers at the WTC probably were innocent. But he’s not backed down from his general thesis, that the 9\/11 attacks were a justified and understandable<\/a> response to American evil. Indeed, reaction to him has, he says, demonstrated it:<\/p>\n

Churchill told his students Tuesday that people making threats against him in the name of Sept. 11 victims and their families are proving his initial thesis; that people who feel they are being victimized and degraded will naturally respond with terrorism and violence. “The dynamic is exactly the same. So they’ve proved my point,” Churchill said.<\/p>\n

Because of the brouhaha, he has resigned from the chair of the Ethnic Studies department (which, he claims, he never wanted), but various pols and protesters want him fired from the university. Churchill seems to relish being bloodied but unbowed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I’m not giving an inch. I don’t have to,” he told his students. “This is my vocation. This is what I’ve done my whole life,” he said. “My intent is to remain here, and, in legal terms, I expect to be here, now, next year, and the year after.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a college he was scheduled to speak at had to cancel his appearance<\/a> due to death threats.<\/p>\n

My two cents:<\/p>\n