Ward Churchill, meet Alice In Chains

Ward Churchill, meet Alice In Chains

It's alright
There comes a time
Got no patience to search for peace of mind
Layin' low
Want to take it slow
No more hiding or disguising truths I've sold

Yeah, it's fine
We'll walk down the line
Leave our rain, a cold trade for warm sunshine
You my friend
I will defend
And if we change, well I love you anyway

Everyday it's something
Hits me all so cold
Find me sittin' by myself
No excuses that I know

I got myself in a mess once for saying something politically incorrect about 9/11. I won't repeat it exactly here, but I wouldn't take it back either. I will note that if we were serious about preventing a terrorist attack, we'd stop living like we're in Israel and with cutting off every nickel of US aid to Israel.

So I feel a little intellectual sympathy with Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, who has succeeded in pissing off 99% of Americans by likening the 9/11 victims to Nazi death camp guards. All this was in the context of a deep academic discussion that most flag-wavers can't begin to comprehend.

Here's what he actually said.

First off, this conflict is not about "terrorism" which as Bob Kerrey notes is a tactic and not an ideology. Bin Laden has repeatedly stated his grievances:

US one-sided support of Israel over Palestine

US backing of unrepresentative governments throughout the Islamic world

US troops in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia

And frankly, despite his reprehensible tactics - and I'm deliberately saying this in a politically incorrect way - I find myself in more agreement with Bin Laden than with Bush on these items.

Does that somehow excuse me from this war? Are we as Americans collectively responsible for this? For electing and supporting governments of both parties from Truman to Bush that have to varying degrees implemented and backed these policies? If we accept the principles of democratic government and the rule of the majority, perhaps we are - even those of us who dissent.

All this was written three years ago, but Washington Monthly notes it was recently re-publicized due to "the agenda-setting power of the right wing outrage machine and the agenda-setting power of the New York Times.:

The Denver papers are discussing the concept of collective guilt, complete with some Holocaust survivor quotes (that should excuse me from the anti-Semitism charges.)

I remember having the collective guilt discussion with northwoods relatives fifteen years or so ago , in the days of the Treaty Rights fights. The courts ruled that the treaties White Man signed with the First Nations were indeed worth the paper they were written on, and the upshot of this was some spear fishing in vacation country. Again and again I heard the refrain "that was 150 years ago, it's not MY fault." The individual over the collective - the American way.

Until I started looking at this closer I didn't realize that Ward Churchill is a Native American, and that context gives his "America bashing" an interesting resonance. He conducted his first post-controversy interviews and is making no excuses. That prompted the rousing chorus of Alice In Chains.

I don't have an answer to the collective guilt concept. What constitutes collective guilt, if anything? Are this sins of the fathers indeed revisited on the sons seventy times seven? What atones for it? Can collective guilt be atoned for individually? Am I less guilty for the sins of my ancestors on the Confederate side of the Civil War because I'm raising my African American daughter?

If there is collective guilt, the 9/11 victims certainly paid for more than their share, dying for our sins in a sense. Were they legitimate targets? Well, I don't think ANYONE is, and I'll repeat my contention that if the Palestinians had produced a Gandhi they'd have a country by now. Churchill distinguished between the financiers and executives killed in the Towers and the janitors and firefighters. (The Pentagon attacks get mentioned less and less; I'll go out on a limb and contend that if you accept the premise that we are "at war" with the radical Islamist movement, our nation's military headquarters is not a civilian target.)

I don't have any answers as usual. Ward Churchill chose language that he must have known was deliberately offensive and I'm guessing he knew the risks. But the discussion is happening and perhaps that was his goal.

Politics