Ward Churchill and Innocence
Naeem Inayatullah (in the Ithacan, February 24, 2005)
Hamilton College recently rescinded a speaking invitation to University of Colorado
professor Ward Churchill after an uproar about his post 9/11 writing. He claimed that
since most of people working at the World Trade Towers were complicit in the smooth
operations of an illegal, immoral, and brutal U.S. empire, such deaths were not those of
pure innocents. University of Colorado’s board of regents is currently investigating his
published works to determine if he can be dismissed for incompetence. While many have
rallied behind Churchill’s free speech rights, few have bothered to study his claims.
Churchill’s central theme can be gleaned from a 1928 passage by Italian General Duehet:
"Any distinction between belligerents and non-belligerents is no longer admissible today
either in fact or theory. Not in theory, because when nations are at war, everyone takes a
part in it: the soldier carrying his gun, the woman loading shells in a factory, the farmer
growing wheat, the scientist experimenting in his laboratory. Not in fact, because
nowadays the offensive may reach anyone."
Churchill uses 32 pages of his, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the
Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality, to demonstrate what the CIA
calls “blowback” and what he refers to as the justice of roosting chickens. The remainder
of the book catalogs instances of US military actions and lists US obstructions,
subversions, violations and refusals of international legality since World War II.
The loyalist impulse in us diminishes such documentation as exaggeration. It allows us
to ignore the record, as did George W. Bush when, shortly after 9/11, he asserted the
consummate goodness of his country and its people. This strategy of diminishment and
denial is commanding because it permits U. S. citizens to frame their national identity as
founded on law. Additionally, there are huge costs to considering that the origins and
identity of this country are built on a sustained pattern of genocide, cruelty, and callous
indifference to the rights of the less powerful. As an IC student dramatically but
exaggeratedly exclaimed to me: “If I accept these accounts, I would have to kill myself.”
At issue is not death, but rather a diminishment of her self-worth, which she fervently ties
to an unstudied national pride. Still, we can sympathize with her: Who would willingly
disengage from a celebrated national identity when that might result in alienation from
one’s nation, family, and from a most loved part of one’s self?
Churchill effectively loosens those bonds by arguing that we all (he includes himself)
participate in the methodical maneuvers of a criminal empire. Evading this indictment is
simpler than confronting it with arguments. Easier still is projecting a posture of cultured
naiveté – a birthright, it seems, of all those who give their allegiance to empire. What
Churchill has done, and, it must be pointed out, in a manner more humane than those
whose weapons go beyond words, is to interrogate that birthright. He has made it more
difficult to ignore the U.S. record. We can begin a candid assessment of that record now
or we can wait while those who have borne the brunt of U.S. violence resort to ever more
desperate and reckless means to gain our attention.