I wanted to see what great insights the latest Leftist-mystic with a cult of personality has to say. Unsurprisingly, I've heard it all before.
First, George Bush should send Ward Churchill a thank you card. Churchill claims that the UN sanctions on Iraq caused the attacks on the World Trade Center. There's the link between al Qaeda and Iraq the Left claims never existed. As a tenured professor-cult leader, Churchill isn't limited by boring facts.
Of course, this is absurd. Osama Bin Laden was angry at the United States for protecting the Apartheid Kingdom of Saudi Arabia* from Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. When U.S. satellite photography of Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi border was shown to King Fahd he chose the United States over Osama Bin Laden and his band of 20,000 mujahadeen to protect the Apartheid Kingdom of Saudi Arabia*. A wise choice. Osama Bin Laden took this to be a grevious insult, one for which he's never forgiven the Saudi royals or the United States.
Osama has offered dozens of rationales for his terrorist activities. The simple explanation is the centuries old doctrine of jihad, which every Muslim is obliged to participate in once a year. But Osama is wily. Using the shotgun approach for justification, from restoring the Caliphate, to killing the infidels, killing the Jews, ending the Israeli-Palistinian dispute, Iraq, getting U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, off the Arabian penisula, out of the Middle East, out of Africa, and many more, he encourages more people (like Ward Churchill) to rally to his 'cause'. But the fact remains, Osama is personally upset the Saudis chose the U.S. over his ragtag army to defeat Saddam Hussein. This is why his first fatwa written in 1996 focuses almost exclusively on the 'infidel' presence of American troops in the 'holy land' near Mecca and Medina. Osama pays lip-service to the Iraqi people, but he would have killed those same people in 1991, had King Fahd taken him up on his offer.
The starvation in Iraq, of course, is not so simple as Churchill makes it out to be. Saddam Hussein used starvation to control the Shia population. There was no starvation in the Sunni areas like Fallujah or Tikrit. Saddam was building gold-plated palaces, rape rooms, medieval torture dungeons, oppressing the Kurds and Shia, and buying arms on the black market while 'his' people were starving. I put his in quotations because to Saddam the Shia and Kurds are not his people, but subjects to be controlled or liquidated.
Starvation was Saddam's best technique for turning the world against the United States and having the sanctions lifted. Saddam had no interest in feeding Iraqi children unless they were in his tribe, his party, or his branch of Islam. By bringing in the already anti-American media and feeding them a steady diet of pictures of starving children, he masterminded one of the great financial scams and propaganda coups of my lifetime.
Eventually, with oil-for-food, Saddam continued to use starvation as a propaganda tool, line his pockets with billions, influence the United Nations Security Council, bribe UN officials, enrich French banks, Russia, China, oil companies worldwide, gained supporters all over the world (including Scott Ritter who was bought for $400,000), and Kofi Annan's son. The money trail is so long, investigations will never reach the end. One final destination not worth looking into is starving Shia children. It's obvious the money didn't go there.
Ward Churchill uses the hackneyed, though admittedly true, statement that the United States is the only nation to use nuclear weapons, specifically on 'civilian' targets. That's true, but for his conclusion that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian targets. Japan distributed its war production out into small businesses all over every Japanese city so U.S. bombers would not have large targets, simple to find and destroy. Hiroshima contained many of these small military cottage industries.
Moreover, does anyone doubt Hitler or Imperial Japan would have used nuclear weapons had they acquired them first? Both nations had wartime nuclear programs. The rape of Nanking, the Holocaust (which Ward Churchill denies),
Japan's Unit 731, V-1 and V-2 rockets on London, and so many more examples, militate against any mercy from the Axis. Moreover, human beings change after protracted war. Any sympathy for the enemy evaporates as the casualties pile up, and an overwhelming desire to end the war with the fewest additional friendly casualties becomes the only goal.
Churchill (of course) never mentions the
Baruch Plan of 1946. This was rejected because Stalin, Mao, France, etc., all wanted to be members of the nuclear "club". That club is very overrated by the way. I want a mine shaft.
Excerpts from the Baruch Plan, written when the U.S. was the world's ONLY nuclear nation:
In that desire the United States shares ardently and hopefully. The search of science for the absolute weapon has reached fruition in this country. But she stands ready to proscribe and destroy this instrument - to lift its use from death to life - if the world will join in a pact to that end.
.....(a) For extending between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends;
(b) For control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes;
(c) For the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction;
(d) For effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions.
The world, Stalin in particular, was not the least bit interested. But Ward Churchill would never say an untoward word about Communism, the Holy Grail of academia in the United States. What gulags? What purges? Those inconvenient statistics which show tens of millions killed might get in the way of a good anti-American rant.
Stalin had several Americans, including the Rosenbergs, more than willing to help enemies of the United States acquire weapons - very much like Ward Churchill and his ilk today.
Churchill makes some good points about Indians living in poverty. Too bad he is above offering solutions other than blowing up the World Trade Center. That's the great thing about being a professor, you can yell all day, but do nothing of consequence.
I could parse every argument he made, but they are the same tiresome arguments you hear from every America-hating Leftist.
Overall, Churchill is a demagogue. He knows
his facts, but ignores the complexity of every issue. As a professor, he obviously lords over his classes with an iron fist. Other than being physically imposing, it is clear he is not interested in both sides of the argument. One might be left with the impression the United States started WWII by firebombing Tokyo, if Ward Churchill's 'lesson plan' is the only information available. Nothing he says is particularly controversial really. If you've seen one ANSWER or IAC demonstration, you've seen them all. It's Churchill's simmering, to boiling over, anger which makes him a cult hero of the radical Left. Combined with his retro-70's look, and faux-Indian style, he's probably irresistible to people whose lives peaked at Woodstock. I find it hard to believe any university hired someone so loose with the facts, so uninterested in intellectual balance, emotionally unbalanced, and so overtly hostile to the United States.
Actually, I don't find it hard to believe. The radical Left has closed the academic shop. Diversity only extends to skin color in the modern American university. When your son or daughter, a proud graduate of the University of Colorado, asks you why the United States attacked Japan in WWII, don't be surprised. At least he or she has a piece of paper which purports to signify an education.
*Only male Muslims have rights in Saudi Arabia.