Prof: More 9/11s May Be Necessary
A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi suggested to a magazine that more terror attacks may be necessary to radicalize Americans to fight the misuse of U.S. power. In an interview Ward Churchill gave with Satya magazine,
... one of the biggies... | he was asked about the effectiveness of protests of U.S. policies and the Iraq war, and responded: "One of the things I've suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary."
Another thing that might be necessary is to round up all the people like Ward Churchill and shoot them. But that'll probably come two or three 9-11s down the road... | The interview prompted Gov. Bill Owens to renew his call for Churchill's firing. "It's amazing that the more we look at Ward Churchill, the more outrageous, treasonous statements we hear from Churchill," Owens said.
We're not discussing an internationally recognized intellect here. | "I don't believe I owe an apology," Churchill said Friday on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" program his first public comments since the University of Colorado began a review that could lead to his dismissal.
"I'm an arrogant twit, but for some reason the only time people pay attention to me is when I say things that are patently stoopid..." | Meanwhile, Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., and Eastern Washington University canceled plans for Churchill to speak on campus, citing public safety concerns. Stephen Jordan, president of Eastern Washington University, declined Friday to say whether specific threats had been made. Churchill defended the essay in which he compared those killed in the Sept. 11 attack to "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate European Jews. He said the victims were akin to U.S. military operations' collateral damage or innocent civilians mistakenly killed by soldiers.
He means they were people of no consequence, nobody he knew or even that his friends knew... | "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."
Actually it's not, since the Bad Guyz were specifically targeting large numbers of civilians and military operations don't do that. | In an interview published Saturday in the Rocky Mountain News, Churchill added, "This was a gut response opinion speech written in about four hours. It's not completely reasoned and thought through."
"In fact, it's not reasoned at all. It's just a mish-mash that fell out of my head and somebody was dumb enough to give me money for writing it." | Churchill said his speech had been misinterpreted. "I never called for the deaths of millions of Americans," he said.
"I just gloated over the deaths of thousands of them." | The furor over Churchill's essay erupted last month after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. The speech was later canceled. Churchill, who recently resigned as chairman of the ethnic studies department but remains a tenured professor, said he would sue if he were dismissed.
"They can't do that to me! I'm much, much too important!" | Satya identifies Churchill as a Cherokee and a longtime native rights activist. The magazine's Web site says, "One of Churchill's areas of expertise is the history of the U.S. government's genocide of Native Americansthe chronic violation of treaties and systematic extermination of North American indigenous populations."
Posted by: Fred 2005-02-07 |