Posted by: McQ on Thursday, June 30, 2005 Under the "here we go again" department, Ward Churchill has again slithered out from under his rock to inflict himself on us: Churchill, speaking at an anti- military forum in Portland, Ore., military remarksOf course Churchill defends himself by claiming he was taken out of context. Big surprise: Reached at his home in Boulder County on Wednesday night, Churchill said the comments were made merely to spark discussion and not to take a position on fragging, which is the killing or injuring of an officer in combat by a subordinate.OK, there are the two sides. You can see the video from O'Reilly in which the audio clip is aired here. You can hear the whole audio here. Now, we're left to decide what his intent is in this whole thing. Advocacy or, as he says, said merely to spark discussion. Well I'll leave you with this, not taken out of any context ... question and answer: Questioner: I think it's important when you're getting into a discussion of violence and appropriate violence and self-defense, of starting to look at what you're trying to build there, what you're trying to create—for example, fragging an officer, which you were talking about before, at the beginning of your talk, the sort of trauma that that inflicts on that officer's family back home is I feel like an important thing to take into account when you try to think about what your action is trying to accomplish in the first place. I really feel like I can articulate [my question] properly, but that's the general direction I'm heading with it.Heh, nice. As a former officer in the military, I'm now an Eichman as well? UPDATE: So I sit back for a second and I reflect on Churchill's words. "Was he really just making that as a general statement to spur discussion or was that really advocacy aimed at a specific audience," I wondered? It was certainly said in front of an audience worried about specific things, that's for sure. It was an American audience Churchill was addressing, an audience worried about only one war in terms of "conscientious objectors" and "fragging officers." And although I'm sure many don't remember this, there was once an organization in the Vietnam era (FTA) which passed out little booklets to soldiers encouraging them to frag their officers. I'm sure Churchill remembers them with fondness. So even though I try to give him the benefit of the doubt on the "context" issue, I simply can't. Sure he was talking about support v. action. But I got the impression he was trying to prompt action. And I got the distinct impression that he approved of the action he was discussing. You see, had he answered the question about fragging's effect on the family by saying something like, "that's irrelevant in terms of the choice you must make if you're truly committed to helping stop an unjust war", I might be able to let his comments slide. That would be vague enough to buy his context complaint. But when he immediately invoked the memory of his favorite Nazi while a war in which two know fraggings have occurred is in progress, I have to say I believe those decrying his remarks got it precisely right. |
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