Some complain if statements are incorrect; others complain if they are correct. :-0
Anyhow, in your opinion, endorsing terrorism makes one objectively guilty and endorsing the Soviet Union under Stalin, which most Communists did at one time, makes one objectively innocent. It is certainly possible to make a case that nothing good can possibly come from terrorism while the Soviet Union under Stalin at the very least contributed a few precious things to mankind, including most importantly its contribution to the defeat of fascists, but that's a case that one must make politically, without expecting others to automatically accept the distinction as objective. Rather, expect them to argue that endorsing the Soviet Union under Stalin is worse than endorsing terrorism, as Stalin's state terror objectively took a larger toll than all non-state terrorist attacks combined.
When Paula Zahn asked Ward Churchill pointblank, "you're against terrorism?" Churchill replied, "I am against terrorism" (February 4, 2005,<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0502/04/pzn.01.html>). I don't know if that's Churchill retreating from the thrust of his 9/11 essay or clarifying what he intended to say but failed to get across in the essay, but, even if the former is the case, certainly people are allowed to change their minds, and in fact they are encouraged to do so, if they are changing for the better.
However, it would have been an interesting test of free speech and academic freedom in the United States if Churchill had said that he in fact justified some forms of terrorism, for justifying terrorism (whether particular terrorist attacks or terrorism in the abstract as one means among other violent means), as well as justifying war (whether particular wars or war in the abstract), is supposedly protected by the First Amendment.
In fact, Ted Honderich (<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/>, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University College London) declared his "commitment to the moral right of the Palestinians to their terrorism of resistance" (<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/Being_Palestinian.html>). I've yet to read his provocatively titled book _Terrorism For Humanity: Inquiries in Political Philosophy_ (University of Michigan Press, <http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=114538>, 2003), but he has made his essays and interviews on the same topic available on the Net: e.g.,
<blockquote>The Palestinians do indeed have a moral right to their terrorism, and would have this right even if their terrorism was not a response to state-terrorism -- to say they have a moral right is to say that their terrorism has the support of a moral principle of force, indeed the moral principle more capable than any other of justifying actions. As for 9/11, it was hideous and monstrous in its moral irrationality. Nothing else can be said of it. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, if conceivably rational in terms of a certain end, was another attack on humanity. Bush and Blair are moral criminals, whatever their capability of realizing it. They would be criminals in international law if that thing was what all victors and some lawyers pretend it to be. (Ted Honderich, "Terrorism for Humanity," <http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/terrforhum.html>)</blockquote>
There have been attacks on Honderich ("a campaign was begun of which the aim of was to have the college take down the website at which you are looking"), but they have been comparatively milder than ones on Churchill and other left-wing professors in the United States, and Honderich withstood them easily and came out triumphant: "The articles about Ted Honderich contained falsehoods and false implications, and were in the opinion of his lawyers, Farrer & Co., and Mr. Julian Pike in particular, defamatory and inflammatory. One implication was of anti-Semitism. As a result, London Student agreed to apologise, which it did, and to print a considerable reply, and to refrain from repeating various allegations. It has also agreed to pay Professor Honderich's considerable legal costs" ("Ted Honderich and the Newspaper _LondonStudent_," <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/LondonStudent.html>). I gather that there is more room for freedom of speech in the United Kingdom than in the United States, despite the fact that the latter has better legal guarantees for free speech than the former. -- 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/>