“Most of Churchill’s output is not even scholarship… Churchill routinely exaggerates and even makes up data. ”

If it’s so “routine” and “astounding” (below) then it shouldn’t be hard to find just one example.

Fred said

“Twenty five different scholars sitting on four different CU committees have looked at the research misconduct charges against Churchill. All 25 unanimously agree that he committed serious research misconduct, and is deserving of serious sanctions. …the evidence of Churchill’s personal corruption is astounding. He deserves to be fired … for his abuse of scholarly ethics.”

Ward Churchill’s response:

Regents of the University of Colorado accepted, in full knowledge at this point, a non-scholarly sham of an investigative report, creating the pretext. And I say “non-scholarly” because the university has withdrawn the entire investigative report from any scholarly scrutiny. They refuse to allow it to be subject to scrutiny by competent scholars. And there are research misconduct complaints in place at this point against the members of the investigative committee for serial plagiarism, wholesale falsification, outright fabrication — in other words, fraud. It’s a fraudulent finding.

So there is no defensible scholarly conclusions that anything I’ve said in my writing is even inaccurate, much less fraudulent, or that I committed the so-called plagiarism. All they’ve got is public outrage in the form of very well-organized rightwing lobbying blocks, and the statements of public officials, and so on, saying I should be removed as the basis for removing me.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/25/145254

The reaction to Joshua Frank’s “The Liberal of Prof. Ward Churchill” illustrates the deeply ingrained indoctrination, common to western “liberals.” American “exceptionalism.” So powerful, that even the most fundamental moral principle is easily ignored, with predictable resort to obfuscation.

The moral truism of Universality is the visible central theme in the writings of Churchill related to 9/11. Then, as now, the “controversy” surrounds mostly attenuated or tangential aspects of Churchill’s style, not analysis of the governing theme.

Focusing then on Churchill’s main theme – Universality, we reduce the discussion to the core principle: We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others, if not more stringent.

When we consider the magnitude and volume of state terrorism and war crimes committed by the US government and relevant client states, since 9/11 alone, we see immediately, that Churchill’s analysis is fairly accurate.

The fundamental question then becomes: If it is “terrorism” when official enemies commit the crime, then why is it not so when our government does it? All other arguments and analysis logical flow and very valuable discussion can be had, unless of course, we resort to distractions and other tangents that are mostly irrelevant.

To that end, consider the response of so-called progressives to Churchill for simply pointing out, with stark clarity, the hypocrisy we enjoy within our western empire. Predictably, we spend most of our efforts bathing in righteous indignation, as we lash out at other countries and peoples for crimes that pale in comparison to what our own government and industrial complex commits, daily.

At best, we mildly criticize our “leadership” and ignore or fail to understand the violent reaction of others, to our savage policies, instead equating the violence of the oppressed, with the violence of oppressor. When

You will search in vain for sober analysis like Frank’s. Instead, Churchill is subjected to repeated lashings, especially by American “liberals,” for his crime of pointing out American “exceptionalism,” using Universality, something people in the rest of the world are well aware of, even if we choose to ignore it.

Instead, we see the predictable reaction from Fred, who calls into question Churchill’s body of scholarship or Marikken, who bases his analysis on a personal anecdote involving Churchill, or the best of bunch – Michael Dawson, who insists that Churchill’s writing shows, “unjustifiable, and politically stupid contempt for ordinary Americans and the actual power and knowledge conditions in which they live.”

Thus, Americans, who comparatively enjoy unequaled privilege in the world and have power to make political changes unavailable to the victims of US state terrorism, are not responsible for their government’s actions, nor are they to engage in analysis of the most fundamental of moral truisms, because as Michael Dawson reasons, Americans “have no clue and no say about actual history.” So instead, Americans are encouraged to do their part in the service of power. Attack Churchill and treat him miserably.

I don’t agree with Churchill on the issue of complicity though, simply because I don’t agree wih the left thesis that capitalism per se is bad. Imperialism seems to me to be a perversion of free enterprise and capitalism. And speculative finance is not investment and growth (not that I think growth is the be-all and end-all…it’s simply one aspect of the perversion of terminology when the state gets mixed up with the economy at every turn)…Gabriel Kolko wrote a very good book on how it was actually big business cum government intervention that led to monopolies…on their own, monopolies were not the natural development of free enterprise.

People don’t consider politicians pariahs for the things they actually do…if society does not shun Bush or Clinton or Brzezinksi or Kissinger (sticking to American pols alone for the minute) – who are directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundereds of thousands of people – millions…or Jeff Sachs or Greenspan or any economist whose policies ruined whole economies – then why on earth are we picking on someone for something they just said? Did Churchill kill anyone? Did he bomb, or poison anyone? Did he steal, plunder or rape? Did he connive and lie?

No, he was voicing an opinion…
Ah!

And about his rudeness on one day..

The guy is under a lot of pressure. Talking about himself? I guess he’s feeling a bit persecuted these days. Understandable, I think.

Personally, there are many days on which I ‘ve blown off steam a bit for much less..

I have a bit of a story on this because my publisher had sent out for a blurb request from Churchill (whom I had not read and whom I had heard about only in relation to his delineation of Native Indian history) before the controversy developed.

Not remembering this, I wrote a piece on Churchill’s article — “Little Eichman’s and the Harijans” for Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva02152005.html).

“That’s the perverse logic of binary inversions of black and white and it’s what the radical rhetoric of the right and left both miss. In the immediate aftermath of an event as emotional as 9/11, was the public debate really served by comparing ordinary money managers to the arch-Nazi Eichmann? Would Churchill also be willing to argue that some Iraqis citizens in Fallujah may have tacitly supported Saddam’s oppressive policies and might therefore also be little Eichmanns meriting extermination?

The greatest danger of magical thinking is not simply in the likelihood of such inversions boomeranging to hit you in the face – witness “reverse discrimination” and white or Brahmin backlash – but in the strengthening of exactly the passions and irrationality on which public support for war feeds in the first place…”

In the article, I spent some time – objecting for various reasons to Churchill’s use of the word “Nazi” (I did not say it was a morally indefensible argument – I said that it was tired and intellectually somewhat weak)..

A month or two later, I got a blurb from Churchill in which he got his back with a two-handed jab that endorsed my work (He called it “excruciatingly precise” ) but also reiterated his own use of the word Nazi firmly.

Guess what? Having by then waded through a stack of Bush jurisprudence, I was overcome with Schmittean flashbacks…
Nazi still sounded wrong to me..but the legal justifications and military and nonmilitary acts of omission and commission were certainly similar enough that while my criticisms were good ones, Churchill’s rejoinder was apt…

Calling a country’s laws Schmittean (Promethean was the word I coined)…is suggesting its government is similar to the Nazis…
why split hairs? Why be so excruciatingly precise?

I felt a momentary twinge. I had been temperate and said something which people might be able to digest and like…

Churchill said something that discomfitted people…

I am not now sure who took the high road…

I stuck the blurb on the jacket.
Distancing myself from it at that moment would have been wrong.
And distancing ourselves from Churchill, when we really are saying the same things, only in different or more subtle or more nuanced ways…is
somehow not right.

Even though, prudentially I agree it might not help.
Intuitively, morally, it is the right thing to do.

Most of Churchill’s output is not even scholarship, much less scholarship at its best. Churchill routinely exaggerates and even makes up data. Twenty five different scholars sitting on four different CU committees have looked at the research misconduct charges against Churchill. All 25 unanimously agree that he committed serious research misconduct, and is deserving of serious sanctions.

The impetus for the investigation may have been political, but the evidence of Churchill’s personal corruption is astounding. It is foolish to line up behind this guy. He deserves to be fired not for what he said, but for his abuse of scholarly ethics.

That being said, Churchill’s work, especially the historical outline he provides in his book “The Justice of Roosting Chickens” is scholarship at its best. He exposes the brutal reality of this country like no one else.

You don’t even acknowledge that his critics refused for the most part to discuss the history of US involvement in the Middle East after they were done waving the bloody shirt of the 9/11 victims. I may not agree with what Churchill said or the way he said it either, but the opportunity to discuss US foreign policy that his article created was pissed away so establishment noodlers could retain their scholarly distance from the questions he raised.

I wasn’t arguing that Bush is no more responsible than the average citizen. I agree that he is ultimately responsible. But to about a third of our fellow citizens, he was just doing what he thought was best for the country in spite of all the evidence. Under those circumstances, he won’t ever be held responsible. And yes, that’s pretty damn depressing.

Meanwhile, you can always split hairs and talk like a nihilist if you want to. But to argue that you don’t see how George Bush is more responsible than Joe or Jane Sixpack is just willfully dumb. He’s the highly advised President of the United States. He started an illegal war and can stop it with the stroke of a pen. Most of the rest of us can’t even cast a vote that matters.

P.S. Bush belongs in jail, not death by terrorism.

By this logic: George Bush is a father and a husband–is it really fair to Jenna, Barbara, and Laura to call him a criminal, much less to submit them to the humiliation of impeachment or a trial? Blackwater mercenaries are good family men, just trying to provide for their families, and anyway, you have no right to judge their conduct because you don’t know what it’s like over there. The corporate CEO who takes advantage of people’s desperation to cut his labor costs has a duty to his stockholders, and can’t be blamed for trying to increase efficiency and cut overhead. On and on….

Meanwhile, terrorism is terrorism, theirs and (far bigger and more frequent) ours. Both types are illegal and wrong. Every chance the left blows to make this clear is another slide down our slow slope to political oblivion. Cooper and Lappe are grandstanding sell-outs, but Churchill is no better. The job of the left is not to paint Al Qaeda as heroes. It is to explain where Al Qaeda came from, and how to REALLY attack it and all the other expressions of injustice and inhumanity.

Second: I work at the University of Colorado on the same campus that Churchill did. When this all hit the fan, I was in support of him. For one thing what he had to say didn’t offend me; I could understand what he was saying, and for the second, it was his opinion and surely we all have the right to express our opinion. When he held his first press conference at the University after this came down, I was there to support him. The ballroom was packed and there were speakers outside for the many that couldn’t squeeze inside. I remember he came in and struck an imposing figure; tall and large as he is, and he was flanked by Indian bodyguards. There were perhaps three people who booed, but they were quickly drowned out by the rest of us who cheered loudly for him. He seemed moved when he got to the podium; I don’t think he had expected such rousing support. He expressed humble gratefulness for the support and proceeded with an inspiring and stirring speech. There were questions and answers, and then he left – always surrounded by his Indian body-guards. I went back to my car feeling inspired and hopeful.

A while later I attended a discussion that had a panel of speakers; one of which was Churchill. It went fine for a while, although I did feel Churchill kept the discussion centered on himself, and there was a Latina woman who pointed this out. He came unglued. He verbally attacked her and stood up and leaned over in a very threatening manner. Another Latino man stood up and spoke against Churchill and he was even more abusive toward him, telling him to “shut up” over and over again. This from a man who was crying “free speech” for himself?! I was shocked and dismayed that afternoon. Another woman and I tried to talk to him about it after it was over, but he dismissed us rudely, laughing at us. My impression of him was completely reversed. I still criticize the regents and the administration for trying to dismiss him because that is wrong. But I also now realize that this man who criticizes Bush for being a bully, is a bully himself – and a hypocrite.

It’s odd that words like this need to be accompanied with a pledge to mean only what they mean.

Where does Lappe draw the line? An inch under Dick Cheney?

“Where do you draw the line? What about the secretaries who serve coffee to the little Eichmanns? They keep the evil system caffeinated, should they die? What if you own stock? Does earning dividends on GE mean your apartment building should be leveled with you in it? What if you keep your money at Chase or Citibank? Buy stuff at Wal-Mart? Pay federal taxes? Or better yet, what if you work for the government?”

Indeed, Anthony Lappe, where do you draw the line? The hysterical rejection of any real investigation into the 9/11 attacks on the part of the establishment left–we must, after all, reject “outrageous conspiracy theories,” as instructed by that avatar of open government George W. Bush–was supposed to reassure us that there are no secrets, that the government would never take the lives of innocent civilians because there is so much oversight and those participating can always be counted on to sacrifice their careers, families, or freedom to come forward and out any such plans or policies.

Now we’re told that the people who actually carry out these policies aren’t responsible either.

So we’re left with this conundrum: if there are no planners who are responsible, and there are no bureaucrats, agents, military personnel, or other actors who are responsible–they’re all people “just trying to make a living” and “following orders” according to this conventional wisdom–just who the hell IS responsible, and what can we do about it?

You can see why some people resort to acribing the world’s ills to Satan or reptilian aliens when there is so much entrenched denial that our fellow citizens are perfectly capapble of atrocities, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.