9/11 victims deserved their fate

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by laurentius

You hate opinions opposed to yours dont you.

No, he expected the morons to show up sooner. Where did he say hate?

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by BeBro


So you wouldn't worry if the US would nuke Mecca in retaliation? Those nukes can come in quite handy. Maybe they would prefer to get OBL in another way, but hey, it's a war going on after all , hm?

The US would certainly nuke Mecca if it paid off. But the massive outrage over such an event all over the world would overshadow any possible positive effect of destroying Mecca. That is why it won't be nuked.

[Mordoch]

The Rocky Mountain News is now calling for him to be fired and discussed other aspects of his past record.

Regents should show Churchill the door

Prof feeling justice of roosting chickens

February 2, 2005

By today's standards, it counts as major progress when a college authority questions the off-campus rants and anemic scholarship of one of its tenured professors. But when the University of Colorado Board of Regents convenes Thursday to ponder the career of Ward Churchill, we hope its members go beyond the status quo. They should ask themselves why the state's premier institution of higher learning should continue to serve as a bully pulpit for Churchill's cult of violence.

It's not primarily that Churchill is an unrepentant cheerleader for the 9/11 attacks that prompts us to support calls for his firing. Nor is it his annual Columbus Day attempts to deny other citizens their First Amendment rights. Had it not been for the now canceled Hamilton College invitation to Churchill, we might never have discovered "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," his essay reflecting on 9/11, in which he extols the "combat teams" that struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, claiming that, far from being innocent victims, the thousands of people who were murdered that day were "little Eichmanns" complicit in various foreign policy sins committed by the United States. More chilling was his prediction that terrorists would strike again in order to "push back" and teach evil America a lesson. "As they should," he added. "As they must."

No, as The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial last week, there are Churchills "at campuses everywhere" who occasionally indulge in such reprehensible rhetoric. Rather, what the regents should know is that, however odious Churchill's remarks about 9/11, they are perfectly in keeping with his long and sordid history of advocating violence against America and Americans. The proof is in many of his public lectures, and in some of his published "scholarship."

Indeed, for much of his career, Churchill has been belittling the activist left for abandoning armed struggle for various forms of non-violent protest. Without violence as a tactical option in its arsenal of weapons against state capitalism, he argues, the left ends up defending and reinforcing the same status quo it claims to oppose.

Such calls to action are given fuller treatment in Churchill's main polemical work, Pacifism as Pathology, which pays special tribute to Diana Oughton, one of three members of the terrorist Weather Underground who accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 while making bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse.

Predictably enough, the book, which was published in various forms between 1986 and 1998, evolved from a workshop Churchill delivered in the early 1980s entitled "Demystifying the Assault Rifle," the objective of which was to help squeamish pacifists conquer their fear of weapons. After two hours of handling Heckler & Koch assault rifles, participants were apprised of the "applicability of various types of guns to different situations" and "the role of arms in assorted political contexts . . ."

It wouldn't be unusual for a professor whose field is ethnic studies to decry injustices committed against indigenous peoples in the United States and elsewhere. But in his public lectures around the country, Churchill has exhorted his troops to violence. In one speech, for example, he urged using violence to prevent tourists from going to Hawaii. "You want to do something constructive for indigenous Hawaiians? Stay home. And if you have to break their kneecaps in order to get them to, do it."

Nor has his praise of the 9/11 terrorists been a one-time affair. In a 2001 lecture, Churchill said: "On Sept. 11, American exceptionalism came to an end, and the people who did it owe no apology for it whatsoever . . . The action was correct, given the circumstances that were created here both by the elites who inflict the pain and the purported opposition, which really does nothing to end it."

It's no small matter to rescind tenure, but there are surely times when it's appropriate - criminal behavior, for example. Or a historian of the Second World War who argues that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Academic freedom is not the same as First Amendment protection. Of course Churchill has First Amendment rights. We would defend his right as a citizen to make all the statements we have cited. But academic freedom, while it should protect a wide variety of speech, even offensive speech, has limits. Surely public officials must draw that line at someone who consistently advocates violence as an antidote to society's ills.

Churchill bet wrong that he could salute the terrorists of 9/11 and no one would push back. Now a career marked by repeated celebration of the virtue of armed struggle is on the line. Though he resigned under pressure Monday as chair of the university's department of ethnic studies, the regents ought to initiate a process that pushes him out the door.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3515975,00.html

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
All what laurentius said.

I am against this nasty habit of demonizing the enemy, be it even terrorists. It's a war going on after all, and those people are fighting it with the means that are immediately accessible to them. No doubt, they would love to meet your tank brigade in the field and crush it. But they can't. They just do what they can. The article is a step in the right direction, towards an unbiased analysis of what is really going on.

One assumes you were as sanguine when a theatre full of Russians was held hostage in Moscow.

Forgive us, we missed the chorus of Russians saying you (the hostages) deserved it.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by The Vagabond


The US would certainly nuke Mecca if it paid off. But the massive outrage over such an event all over the world would overshadow any possible positive effect of destroying Mecca. That is why it won't be nuked.

Of course that doesn't answer my question, which was if you would defend such an action with the allmighty "It's a war going on after all, and they just do what they can" argument (which sounds just like "the end does justify the means" to me)

I think it is a bad argument, because you can justify anything with it.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Vagabond


The US would certainly nuke Mecca if it paid off. But the massive outrage over such an event all over the world would overshadow any possible positive effect of destroying Mecca. That is why it won't be nuked.

But Russia can level Grozny and keep it leveled.

I see.

Egregious acts must be kept small to stay off the radar. Thanks for the advice.

[molly bloom]

If anyone 'needs' this article to make them think, then I suggest they try not to carry out such an obviously unusual and uncommonly strenuous activity without first aid and an emergency crash cart standing by.


The terrorist thinking on 11th September resembles the 'magical thinking' of psychopaths and serial killers (especially as outlined in Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' for instance).


Quite how they expected to balance out the deaths of Iraqi children with the deaths of non-Americans, and fellow Muslims too, I really don't understand.

And what kind of response did these people expect? That the American government would say:

" Omigawsh! Now the scales have dropped from our eyes, and we will completely reverse our policies in the Middle and Near East and start educating a generation of Neo-orientalists so that we may better understand the socio-economic-political fabric of the world of Islam!"

A cursory examination of the history of American behaviour and involvement in Central and Latin America might have proved quite fruitful in terms of judging political realities in the real world, rather than the world of magical realism the mass killers inhabited.

The people in the World Trade Centre no more 'deserved' their fate than did the Kurds in Halabja.
If these terrorists had been so concerned with the well-being of Iraqi children and citizens then they could have volunteered to perform charitable works in Iraq, they coul dhave raised funds to send food and medical supplies to Iraq, they could have smuggled supplies into Iraq through Jordan- but no, how much better to relieve the suffering of Iraqi children in need of transplants, or surgery by using civilian airliners as flying bombs and killing non-military personnel.

I must try it the next time I get exercised about social injustices.

[Atahualpa]

I am against this nasty habit of demonizing the enemy, be it even terrorists. It's a war going on after all, and those people are fighting it with the means that are immediately accessible to them. No doubt, they would love to meet your tank brigade in the field and crush it. But they can't. They just do what they can. The article is a step in the right direction, towards an unbiased analysis of what is really going on.

If I take the article on a very abstract level I can agree with this.

I don't believe that any of the people died in the twin towers deserved death and I think arguing that way is really stupid.
Though _basically_ there are more levels on which to look at the situation and if you go more globally you can see the causes and consequences that makes one understand the WHY. On the one hand I think this is what the author tried to argue.
OTOH, what the author has not understood is that this doesn't influence justice on a local level. On the local level (and that's where our judical system works), the hijackers flew the plane into the building on purpose, so they are responsible for their deaths and to be called murderers. But again, the US GI in iraq killing civilians is a murderer as well.
Both civilians live in a combat zone, the iraqi in one declared by the US and the american in one declared by terrorists. Therefor it's hard to do any judging, though most people seem to think that only governments may declare war and combat zones. This is what has changed with the 9/11 attack.

[Pekka]

Well well.. I agree, that when someone pushes someone, that someone will push back at certain point.

However, I don't think saying the victims deserved it is a sane argument. They were most of all innocent to the pushing in the first place. Yes they pay taxes but I buy Coca Cola so I would have deserved it the same then.

I have problems with civilian targets. I guess most of us do. I maintain my position, where the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists is, currently, that freedom fighters represent an oppressed group of people or minority, a legit group, and they target military and POSSIBLY political targets. This means, that flying planes to towers, even though it has political ramifications are not valid scores for freedom fighters.

This is my problem with the Palestinian question too, they rarely target soldiers. So I have hard time to think they are nothing but terrorists, the ones who carry out these acts.

[Sikander]

It's fun to see a local annoyance blown up into an international celebrity. The guy is a violence spewing crank. Unlike most people of that ilk he is thoughtfully provided with a salary and a podium from which to preach his crap to our children. He is exhibit A in my quest to dismantle "Ethnic Studies" departments around the country. The vast majority are simply havens for seditious politicians.

[Atahualpa]

Where do you see the international celebrity?
Haven't seen this in news here and it probably won't come unless the US makes a big fuss about it.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by notyoueither


One assumes you were as sanguine when a theatre full of Russians was held hostage in Moscow.

Forgive us, we missed the chorus of Russians saying you (the hostages) deserved it.

Don't mix an emotional reaction with a sober analysis of what is really going on.

Relatives of a crime victim are ready to tear the criminal to pieces. Yet society handles this by means of a sober approach.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by BeBro


Of course that doesn't answer my question, which was if you would defend such an action with the allmighty "It's a war going on after all, and they just do what they can" argument

I can't provide a direct answer here. Such an event is too horrible and hypothetical.

(which sounds just like "the end does justify the means" to me)

I think it is a bad argument, because you can justify anything with it.

Well, yours is a bad argument too, because you can condemn anything with it.

In such cases, one should look for more general premises in order to launch an analysis. This is what a sober analysis does.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by notyoueither


But Russia can level Grozny and keep it leveled.

I see.

Egregious acts must be kept small to stay off the radar. Thanks for the advice.

No need for thanks. Your govs know this cynical truth pretty well already.

[molly bloom]

It's odd, but the thinking behind that article reminded me of a comedy sketch from a British show - 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'.

It had the usual gaggle of would be urban terrorists- the Calvin Kleinhof Gang, say, sat down to earnestly study Marx's 'Grundrisse' and 'Das Kapital' .

They start to read, find serious examination of the issues too difficult, and say:

" F*ck this, let's go and blow something up."