Ward Churchill's Defenders--Update
Bill Johnson writes a
very careful but stupid nonetheless column in the Rocky Mountain Press. His defense is that somebody else (Chalmers Johnson) wrote something more incendiary and idiotic, and nobody's calling for his head.
What struck me the most, though, is how familiar it all was. The Eichmann reference clearly was stupid and was designed to be incendiary. A fair reader of the essay will not, though, be tripped up by it. In no way was he saying children, police officers and firefighters deserved to die.
Instead, he is saying they were the enemy's "collateral damage," no different from the innocent Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese and a host of others who have been killed when our military weapons miss and, sometimes, hit their targets.
I'd like to check the original, but somehow the
Eichmann reference has disappeared from the page. Now how do you think that could have happened?
The Chalmers Johnson bit is a diversion, as this paragraph reveals:
And Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, has had no one call for his college position or his life.
Well, nobody with a lick of sense has called for Ward Churchill's life, and as for the job part:
He is 73 years old. "I certainly am not out there trying to get tenure. And I don't need the money. I am retired."
Update: Johnson is the one who's 73. And an unredacted copy of the Churchill's treatise
is located here. Crucial part:
If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
Sort of puts the lie to Johnson's claim:
In no way was he saying children, police officers and firefighters deserved to die.
