Imperialists are more shameless than Ward Churchill, so Churchill failed to adopt their morality to the fullest extent. If Saddam Hussein had built a Trade Center and set up an intelligence agency office in it, and if Washington had bombed it, the US power elite -- including the US corporate media -- would have said, "It's Saddam's fault! He used Iraqi businessmen as human shields! Trying to make us look bad!"
More to the point, though, Churchill is raising a question: "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" ("A Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions," <http://www.counterpunch.org/churchill02032005.html>, February 3, 2005). If we believe that no one from other countries would ever kill or maim us using the same logic that Washington had to kill and maim their countrymen and -women, we falsely romanticize them, i.e., thinking that they are inherently morally superior to Americans and never hunger for bloody vengeance.
Churchill, for all his hyperbolic rhetoric that egregiously failed to take contradiction between the ruling and working classes of the United States into account, didn't go so far as to say that Americans should be wiped off the earth (though some Americans have actually said gleefully that Afghans, Iraqis, and other official enemies of America should be) in his infamous essay. What, then, did Churchill desire Americans to do? "American acceptance of onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction of its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice" ("'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," <http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html>). Is that a bad idea? I don't think so.
Churchill, who had mistakenly given up upon the American working class, didn't think, however, that Americans would demand any such thing. Instead, he expected Washington to go on a new crusade -- with the approval of the majority of the American public. As far as the war on Afghanistan was concerned, Americans didn't disappoint Churchill's cynical expectations, measured by the opinion polls taken at that time. Since then, Americans have behaved better than Churchill said they would, but it is also true that their opposition has failed to roll back US imperialism and attacks on civil liberties, just as Churchill said such domestic oppositions in the past have largely failed.
Both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in 2004 said that they advocated "staying the course" on Iraq.
George W. Bush, a really big Eichmann, got reelected in 2004 with a far larger margin than in 2000.
Alberto Gonzalez, a big Eichmann, just got confirmed by the US Senate -- 60 Senators voting for him and 36 against him. In other words, the author of notorious memos justifying torture by narrowing its definition to a vanishing point, received more votes of confirmation than John Ashcroft, who was confirmed, 58-42, in 2001.
The list goes on.
We must refute Ward Churchill, but we had better do so in practice, by actually putting a stop to US imperialism and attacks on civil liberties, not by showing that our sensibilities are more refined than his. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>