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Joe Gandelman, blogging on Dean’s World, has an observation about the recalcitrant and intellectually bereft Ward Churchill.
All kinds of books came out post-911 that clearly laid out the fact that terrorists seek high body counts. It doesn’t matter if the bodies are you, your wife, your newborn kid, your grandmother, Jews, Christians, atheists or Muslims who are unlucky enough to be in the target area.
Joe uses this to illustrate Churchill’s complete lack of intellectual curiosity or authority on Al Qaeda–something that’s bothered me again and again. Churchill has repeatedly claimed that the 911 terrorists targeted the wealthy–the janitors, secretaries, and kids who were killed were mere “collateral damage.”
“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.”
This nonsense repeats the pablum of his official press release on the controversial essay:
Thus, [the Eichmanns comment] was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage.
This claim is either an out and out lie (no surprise considering Churchill’s long history of lying for financial gain or personal profit) or conducive of the kind of pity one feels for the ignorance of animals (to misquote Buckley). The undeniable fact that Professor Churchill knows nothing about his subject matter is all the evidence needed for CU to fire his ass–and fast. He’s an embarrassment, like so many college professors who know far less about their subject matter than their students and the general population.
Even the far, far left seems prepared to abandon Churchill, whom they see, not a true leftist, but as a poseur profiting from left-wing causes:
But, Churchill is now being held up as a some kind of Leftist icon by the corporate media,
a terribly damaging insinuation designed to smear all progressive activists.
We are obliged to do whatever we can to correct this dangerous misimpression.
I’ve been speaking out on this matter to local talk shows. The true Left
must make our voices heard above the disparaging din surrounding Churchill’s inflammatory
rhetoric, as well as his insincere career of posing as someone that he’s not.
The First Amendement does not protect the lies of ethnic charlatans like Ward Churchill.
I validated the author’s assertions by checking out the official website of the American Indian Movement. Here is some pertinent material from their press release on Ward Churchill:
The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council representing the National and International leadership of the American Indian Movement once again is vehemently and emphatically repudiating and condemning the outrageous statements made by academic literary and Indian fraud, Ward Churchill in relationship to the 9-11 tragedy in New York City that claimed thousands of innocent peoples lives.
Ward Churchill has been masquerading as an Indian for years behind his dark glasses and beaded headband. He waves around an honorary membership card that at one time was issued to anyone by the Keetoowah Tribe of Oklahoma. Former President Bill Clinton and many others received these cards, but these cards do not qualify the holder a member of any tribe. He has deceitfully and treacherously fooled innocent and naïve Indian community members in Denver, Colorado, as well as many other people worldwide. Churchill does not represent, nor does he speak on behalf of the American Indian
And while I appreciate so much of Jeff Goldstein’s commentary, on this matter, he is just plain wrong. Unfortunately for Jeff, who’s tired of this subject, Professor Churchill continues to make the errors in Goldstein’s thinking as obvious as the trees in the forest.
I should note that Professor Bainbridge, whom I admire greatly, is also wrong.
https://apnews.myway.com/article/20050206/D8832AT00.html