Churchill sacrificed at imperialism's altar

Andy Manis - AP

WP reports:

The top official at the University of Colorado's flagship campus called on the school Monday to fire Ward Churchill, the professor who compared some World Trade Center victims to a Nazi and then landed in hot water over allegations of academic misconduct.

Ward Churchill is a professor at University of Colorado. Shortly after 9/11, he wrote an essay characterizing the technocrats working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns." According to Wikipedia, Eichmann who was sentenced to death in Israel for his role in the Holocaust was tasked as

"Transportation Administrator", which put him in charge of all the trains which would carry Jews to the Death Camps in the territory of occupied Poland.

Some including Churchill saw Eichmann as an ordinary man blindly doing his duty even if that involved participating in the Holocaust. For more, see Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Right-wingers, foaming at the mouth at what they perceived as an attempt at desecrating innocent, fallen Americans, started an effort to oust Churchill, and after hearings and miscellaneous other charges tagged on, we're at the culmination of that effort.

There are many books out there which portray America as an imperial country which is ruthless in its desire for global resources and hegemonic power. Insiders like John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Men, have even outlined how this is done. While FOIA was instituted to make government more open, the government has in response, outsourced the nasty work of imperialism to close-mouthed companies often working hand-in-hand with agencies like the CIA and NSA.

So, what is an American citizen's responsibility in this? Had we lived under the thumb of a ruthless dictator we could have sloughed off any such accusation. But with much-touted high-minded ideals like freedom and democracy defining our belief in our political system, it is not so easy. The reality is most of us are living in a bubble oblivious of and uncaring about what our government does on our behalf and how we're perceived from the outside. As oblivious as a woman in Afghanistan wearing a burqa, is about women's rights.

If we truly believed our BS about our country (and, really, we don't even have uniform federal voting rights, and "money" is on the same footing as "speech" in elections), we would be hypocrites, no doubt. And indeed, we would be "little Eichmanns" supporting CIA-sponsored assassinations of democratically-elected leaders and resource-based wars like the recent Iraq war which results in the death of many thousands of people.

Personally, I don't believe the BS. Democracy and freedom are both highly compromised. Perhaps this is the best one can hope for in such a powerful nation, and perhaps our freedoms are better in the U.S. than in most nations, but it falls far short of the rhetoric.

So, my point is perhaps we citizens are all little Eichmanns but there is very little we can do about it. Imperialism is a natural outgrowth for nations especially one that is so hegemonic as the U.S. All we can do is keep fighting against that in whatever way we can, and perhaps make a brief difference every once in a while. Depressing? Perhaps, but also relieving.