[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [GreenAllianceUSA] Ward Churchill -- Press Release January 31, 2005

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>This is a case in Colorado of Neo-Con smearing campaign and character
>assassination of a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
>who may lose his job.
>Allen
>
>***
>
>Ward Churchill -- 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 they 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.


-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand