"Professor Refuses to Apologize" (Ward Churchill)

[TexasLawyer]

Professor Refuses to Apologize
Associated Press

DENVER, 6 February 2005 — A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi refused to apologize to the victims’ families in his first public comments since the University of Colorado began a review that could lead to his dismissal.

“I don’t believe I owe an apology,” Ward Churchill said Friday on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” program.

He defended his essay written on Sept. 11, 2001, that said those killed in the trade center were “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate European Jews. He said the victims were akin to US military operations’ collateral damage — or innocent civilians mistakenly killed by soldiers.

“I don’t know if the people of 9/11 specifically wanted to kill everybody that was killed,” he told Zahn. “It was just worth it to them in order to do whatever it was they decided it was necessary to do that bystanders be killed. And that essentially is the same mentality, the same rubric.”

<snip>

&category=World

[DBoon]

1. Maybe when Michelle Malkin apologizes ...

for wanting to put all Muslims into detention camp, I would even consider that Ward Churchill has any need to do so.

We have an Attorney General who openly advocates torture and called the Geneva Convention "quaint" and "obsolete" and people are making an issue about Ward Churchill?

[rpannier]

2. I disagree with what he said.

The little Eichmann's comment is what concerns me the most. I find that comment to be absurb on every level.

[thefloyd]

3. What he said was just rediculous

BUT I am not calling for a lynch mob. I just simply ignore him

[rpannier]

4. I applaud your decision

It shows maturity.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

5. Then perhaps you didn't understand it.

[rpannier]

7. Oh I understood it.

I understood it quite well. I don't split hairs. Wrong is wrong. His use of terms is inflammtory with the intent to draw attention to himself. His premise that running an airplane into the world trade center is an act of war that was a military strike. So, therefore the people in the building were collateral damage. I disagree with his conclusion, since the people in the building were NOT collateral damage by definition. As collateral damage basically means "Unitended targets of a military operation." They knew what they were doing. They intended to kill civilians. Therefore...intended targets and not collateral damage.
His Eichmann analogy is just absurd on any level.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. It's A Violation Of DU Rules To Call Someone A Freeper

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html

[Freedom_from_Chains]

11. I don't beleive I did

I was simply making a suggestion.

[Skittles]

15. and I really, REALLY hate post autopsies

nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. Should I Have Hit The Alert Button On Him Instead...

Skinner said we are supposed to attack people's ideas and not the people advancing them....


But if you want to engage me in a game of snaps I can attempt to descend or ascend to the level of my fellow conversationalist...


Kisses,


Brian

[kypper]

12. Nicely Stated

[Freedom_from_Chains]

13. Thank you

I came across a radio interview Prof. Churchill that you might find interesting. It can be found at.

http://www.850koa.com/main.html

Also, there is an essay at this site that more clearly embodies the premise of Prof. Churchill argument.

The Banality of Evil

http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContAssy.htm

[rpannier]

14. Interesting Points.

You make some very valid points and defend your position quite well. I applaud your response and the research you put into it. For the record, I did give a definition of collateral damage: Unintended targets of a military operation.
I disagree mostly with the tone of your response. I am getting from the tone and wording of your disagreement that you feel you are either more informed than I am or you feel you are more open minded. Not knowing where you are from or anything about you, I will not assume that you know more or less.
I will, for the record state, that I am working and have worked since the mid-nineties in Europe and Asia. I have met and worked with many people with differing world views. I do lunch twice a month with a Shiite Cleric near his Mosque in Seoul, Korea. I have been to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban -- and for the record most people are glad the Taliban is gone (they're just disappointed with the poor US record of providing aid and relief since then). The Iranian government is glad they're gone -- They've made huge inroads into the country, by providing effective assistance in the building of roads and other services since the fall of the Taliban. I can speak volumes on the pluses of the Taliban being gone and the minuses of the US handling of the post-Taliban occupation.
I'm not saying my work and travels makes me better than you or better informed, because I don't know you. But, in the future, please do not denegrate my knowledge of the world and the political situation it's in.
One last thing: If I mistook the tone of your response I apologise in advance.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

17. I am sorry that I came across as being condenscending

That was certainly not my intention. However this is a question that I have studied for more than 20 years, I first began to ask questions concerning our ideology during the taking of the hostages in Tehran in 1979, so I do write from a position of some knowledge.

That compounded with what I see as a group of idealogs that is taking us down a road that places all of our lives in serious jeopardy, I suppose it would be fair to say that I can become passionate in the course of dialog. I apologize if that came across as demeaning your validity in having an opinion.

However, I am very mindful that I currently live in a country, which I am having to seriously look in to the prospects of leaving due to the fact that I cannot, in good conscious, support any longer, that a large portion of its citizenry absolutely refuses to take a look at what we have become in our quest for power. An unfortunate truism that puts all of us at risk which is a reality that I can become terse over.

Again I apologize if I became overbearing.

[EST]

22. And may I add?

When a great big bully is always and constantly picking on and harassing the littler guy, the solution (as most of us have been taught since we learned to read) is to come up with a "push back" that is fairly simple and is devastating to the bully. Terrorism is, many times, the only weapon the victim of such treatment has available to him. I am not condoning this sort of behavior, but, especially in light of the US's own use of terrorism and terrorism by proxy, it is hardly surprising.

[tkmorris]

16. I would question that

How do you know what they intended? The man's point was that certain individuals working withing the WTC were in fact responsible for the death and oppression of thousands worldwide, and as such were perhaps targetted by those who attacked them.

Furthermore he noted that while it was predictable that innocents would be killed this is something the US military does on a routine basis, target people or places knowing full well that innocents will be killed too.

You seem to assume that whover attacked the WTC did so with the INTENT of killing innocent civilians. Firstly that is not neccessarily the case and secondly, we do that too. See: Vietnam.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

19. Even If America Is As Bad As Nazi Germany Or Imperial Japan

that doesn't make the victims of 9-11 any more deserving of their fate than the innocent residents of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki....





"You seem to assume that whover attacked the WTC did so with the INTENT of killing innocent civilians."


There were kids on those planes... Surely the terrorists recognized they were "innocent."

[progressiveright]

6. what he said

is what bin ladin has been saying all along. hey, i don't like your culture and your foreign policies, and since i'm gonna hold every us citizen responsible i don't feel bad about killing any civilians.

this churchill guy is just another idiot. if you are the opposite side and you don't have resources to take your enemy straight on except for terrorism (which was the way russia defeated napoleon and hitler, in russia they were called partisans - people who stayed behind enemy lines and started blowing shit up), the least you can do is to contain terrorism activities to the military forces of the side you are opposing. when you start blowing up innocent civilians you lose all credibility as a freedom fighter.

[kdmorris]

23. Well that explains a lot

"when you start blowing up innocent civilians you lose all credibility as a freedom fighter."

Guess THAT is why WE lost all credibility, hmmmm? Or do you confine your disdain to those who kill innocent AMERICANS only?

[fujiyama]

8. He sounds like an idiot

I don't think he should be fired for saying stupid things, but his Eichmann analogy holds no water. And he is walking a thin line of actually justifying the hijackers' acts.

If he had left it at saying that the Pentagon was a legitimate military target, that's one thing. He'd have a point, after all the Pentagon is a MILITARY institution. It houses the DOD.

The WTC was full of civilians. There may have been government and intelligence officials, but the building mostly housed civilians.

I also find it amusing when he tries to split hairs - saying he's not talking about the waiters and busboys, but only of bankers. What bullshit.

This guy isn't a liberal. He's a quack. No need for lynch mobs. Better to just ignore such nonsense.

[IrateCitizen]

21. The Eichmann analogy is from Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem"...

... and "The Banality of Evil".

There's a link for The Banality of Evil on an above post, or I'm certain you could do a quick internet search for them. Perhaps after you read those, you could understand a little better the perspective that Churchill is trying to convey, and offer up a more reasoned critique than calling him an "idiot" and a "quack".

[JohnOneillsMemory]

24. Churchill worked for years with the Amerian Indian Movement...

...so the Native American Holocaust is a big part of his perspective.
The CIA kills and tortures thousands of people around the world to get heads of state that will play economic ball with the companies who own and run the White House.

Our entire economy now feeds the Military Industrial Complex which requires the oil being died for and we are all complicit in some way with our dollars.

I think Churchill's point was that this makes us all part of Rumsfeld's army, something easy to reject as rediculous until you connect the dots of cause and effect.

Populations and their economies became weapons in WWII and are even more so today. The distinctions between civilian and combatant becomes muddled by the fact that Americans don't even know what their government does or why.

And this sad ignorance is the last innocence we have to hold on to.

Those of us who know what is going on feel even more complicit when we give our money to the weaponized economy. That's why progressives are trying to starve the beast by putting their dollars into local business that isn't destroying the planet.

[theblasmo]

20. Why Should He?

We haven't heard anything from Cheney as an apology, anything from Coulter, anything from Rumsfeld. Churchill's point is something even most lefties would agree with -- that we don't operate our foreign policy in a vacuum, and we need to be aware of the consequences. I disagree with his language, and especially his attempts to explain his essay to interviewers, since he's a snobbish intellectual professor (full disclosure: I also teach at a University, but am not tenured faculty) and refuses to consider his audience long enough to conceive of both the misunderstanding and the controversy. His reference to Eichmann is, of course, from Arendt and her ideas of evil and the people who simply do the day-to-day operations that allow evil to occur, but who do not actually kill (part of the so-called "banality of evil"). Hearing him talk about the idea of people as "collataral damage" is incredibly insensitive, but not that far off from comments made about the deaths of Iraqi civilians from sanctions and open warfare. What good comes from his article are the same kinds of ideas we discuss here in the forum: that to stop terrorism, you must understand why the terrorists do what they do. This means understanding their psyche and their hatred of America and not treating them as inhuman monsters who are "bad guys." Part of that hatred is based on certain American actions in the Middle East that we should angry about. However, many Americans refuse to look at their country as anything than some beautiful mythological entity that only does Good things. No country exists in a vacuum, and our administration tends to think it does, right now. I don't agree with the way he got his message across, but I do agree with him on several points. There are better ways to deliver the message, but at least some people will have to talk about these ideas in order to debate them. Maybe some of them will try to prove the points wrong, check the stuff out, and find out some things they think are true are not. From such stuff is Democracy maintained. And kudos to the way the argument on this page has been handled, with people conceding points, talking to each other instead of at each other. More ways to preserve and strengthen Deomocracy.