Dis Information

A note from a friend asks me what I think of Ward Churchill.

Ward Churchill should not be taken as representing a progressive viewpoint. Even if he gets a few things right, he makes many mistaken conclusions. A much better perspective is given by Emmanuel Ortiz here.

Not that both Bushes, Clinton, Albright, and others don't deserve slamming for a lot of reasons, some of which do include the deaths of several hundred thousand civilians in Iraq.

Beyond that I have some real problems with Churchill's position.

First, he reinforces the fallacy of assuming the 9/11 terrorists were acting in retribution for what's gone on in Iraq.

There wasn't a single Iraqi terrorist. They were mostly Saudis, whose government hated Saddam's and on whose Wah'habi religious fanatics despise secular humanist Islam as much as secular humanist Christianity. Their organization was originally trained by the CIA in the covert war against the Russians in Afghanistan.

The CIA may still be feeding that kitty.

Second, he makes the fallacy that American civilians in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were guilty of sinning by omission, that their inability to stop the mega corporations from plundering the earth made them as guilty as any other mass murderers.

That is illogical. The entire world is interconnected. Connection does not confer control.

Otherwise I could personally send Bu$hCo to jail.

One might as well assume Ward Churchill is just as guilty himself, since he no doubt obtains his food and clothing and shelter and his internet access from the same corporate mechanism that supported the innocent victims of 9/11.

One might as well assume the innocent Iraqi civilians are guilty of Saddam's atrocities.

Or that we are, since our government supported Saddam while he was gassing the Kurds.

Ward Churchill is guilty of some correct but some very confused thinking. He's right that the people at the top of the government are all making piles and piles of money off the middle eastern situation, Wrepublican or DINOcrat. But he's wrong about the motivations behind the 9/11 attack.

He's done more damage to the antiwar movement than good because of his tendency to blame the ignorant but innocent for the sins of the corporate manipulators.

Innocents are innocents, here or there or on any side.

It's our task to educate the ignorant, because without their enlightenment the cycle of retribution and violence won't end.

Of course, those who profit from the Blank Check for Endless War don't want the ignorant educated.

Of course, Bu$histas like to portray Ward Churchill as a typical liberal- which he isn't.