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Sunday, February 06, 2005

Dissent and Debate

Churchill's foreign policy ideas are largely ignored
By Todd Neff (Boulder Daily Camera, 6 Feb 2005)

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's comparison of World Trade Center victims with Nazi technocrat Adolf Eichmann has been quoted in editorial pages across the country.

Yet Churchill's use of the term "little Eichmanns" was a sidelight in a long essay written shortly after the terrorist attacks.

The underlying message he hoped to spread — that America's foreign policy has been damaging abroad and is now dangerous at home — isn't new. But it appears that the public uproar surrounding his more inflammatory statements has obscured Churchill's intended message despite his exposure to millions, courtesy of national media attention.

In a press release posted on the University of Colorado's department of ethnic studies Web site last week, Churchill said his point was that "we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences."

Churchill's 2003 book, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," expanded on the controversial essay written two years earlier. Churchill described the book as a chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II.

Observers critical of U.S. foreign policy, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky and former University of California professor and author Chalmers Johnson, have spoken out on similar issues for years.

Chomsky speaks tirelessly in criticism of American leadership and discusses in encyclopedic detail the human consequences of U.S. actions in Iraq, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, the Balkans and elsewhere.

Johnson predicted domestic retribution for U.S. actions abroad in a book titled "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire," published 18 months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His recently published "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic" warns of dire consequences from what he sees as unchecked U.S. military imperialism.

In a telephone interview, Johnson said so-called "radical" comments by the likes of Churchill or Chomsky pale when compared to those of Bush Administration neoconservatives.

"They're the ones who started it. They're the ones who broke nearly every precedent of foreign policy in the post-Cold-War world. They're the ones who chose preventative war over international law," Johnson said. "That's what I view as destructive, not Noam Chomsky pointing it out."

Johnson said he doesn't know what it will take to get American citizens to hold their government accountable, as envisioned by the Constitution's authors, but "as long as they don't, we will continue to make disastrous mistakes."

Inflammatory arguments may or may not help, he said, although "I don't think we would have ever gotten rid of slavery if it hadn't been for John Brown," the radical abolitionist.
Others prefer a more subtle approach.

"I want people to think that maybe there is some truth about our foreign policy that makes people angry at the United States," said Carolyn Bninski, who focuses on international relations at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder. "I don't want them to hook into a couple of words — like linking people in the Trade Center to Eichmann — and lose the basic message."

Robert Schulzinger, a CU history professor and director of the university's international affairs program, said arguments with Churchill's basic message have been made "by hundreds of people," and often more effectively than Churchill did in this case.

"A bad argument's a bad argument," Schulzinger said. "But people can make bad arguments — that's the whole point of freedom of expression."

Schulzinger noted that U.S. foreign policy also has had its share of supporters.

"Remember, for 12 years after the Cold War there was widespread belief that U.S. foreign policy had been remarkably successful for 40 years and had made the world much more prosperous and free," he said.

Still, criticism of American behavior has come from voices far less radical than Chomsky or Churchill.

In his 2004 book "The Fourth Power," former Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Hart wrote: "America's energy policy is to rely on foreign oil supplies and to go to war for them if threatened. We are using our military — that is to say, young Americans, as the guarantor for our wasteful lifestyle. The American people need to be reminded of this: this is our energy policy, and it is immoral."

In the case of Churchill, his core ideas on U.S. foreign policy appear to have garnered little attention since the discovery of his controversial essay. Uproar and denunciation of his likening World Trade Center victims to the Nazi technocrat has been the primary public reaction. Not far behind has been debate regarding freedom of speech and academic freedom as it applies to a representative of a state university.

Boulder resident Christina Kiffney said she agreed with Churchill's assessment that "there are a lot of people in the world who think America is an evil force." But she said apparent attempts to silence Churchill were her main concern.

"I would think universities are the kinds of environment where we would want to promote this kind of discourse and critique," she said.

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