Ward Churchill's Comments--And the General's

Right-wing pundits are flexing their political muscles and publicly calling for the firing of University of Colorado professor Wade Churchill. (Click here and here.) The attacks have already taken their toll. Churchill’s speaking engagement was cancelled at Hamilton College in New York State, he has resigned as chairman of the university’s ethnic studies department, and Colorado’s Republican Governor Bill Owens has called for the professor’s firing. The tempest involves some inflammatory rhetoric in one of Churchill’s essays following 9/11 in which the professor compared the people who perished in the twin towers to little Eichmanns who were just following the orders of the corrupt American financial and military state.

Yet, the offensive remarks of Marine Corps Lt. General James Mattis, a career infantry officer, on February 1, before a forum in San Diego hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, have caused little controversy. Mattis described combat as a “hell of a hoot” and “a lot of fun.” He asserted, “It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you, I like brawling.”

Speaking of Afghanistan, the Marine officer reduced the conflict to macho stereotypes. He referred to the Taliban as “guys who slap women around for five years because they don’t wear veils.” Mattis concluded, “You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” Rather than these remarks being greeted with moral outrage, newspaper reports assert that the officer’s comments were met with laughter and applause. The same talk shows demanding that professor Churchill be dismissed have been largely silent regarding the offensive language of Mattis, while the commandant of the Marine Corps simply stated that Mattis should watch his words in public. Nevertheless, the comments “reflected the unfortunate and harsh realities of war.”

Such a statement is an insult to the troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan by the Bush administration. Friends and neighbors who have been called into active service are not as simple-minded as Lt. General Mattis. They do not take pleasure in killing another human being. If the goal of the Marine Corps is to make killing “fun,” then there is all the more reason to resist the Iraqi conflict and the efforts of some in the military to make our children over into “killers.”

Unlike Ward Churchill, Lt. General Mattis issues his remarks as a uniformed officer in the United States military representing this nation and its citizens. Yet, Mattis does not speak for me and many other Americans when he takes a “video games approach” to the loss of human life. These are not the values upon which this nation was founded in the Declaration of Independence. General Mattis owes this nation and its soldiers an apology.

On the other hand, Ward Churchill would hardly be shocked by the comments of Mattis. Churchill’s scholarship, written from a Native American perspective, condemns the territorial expansionism, racism, and imperialism of the United States from the colonial era into the present. Churchill argues that America has never lived up to the promise of equality prescribed by the Declaration of Independence.

Thus, in his controversial 9/11 essay, Churchill attempts to assess why so many in the world perceive the United States as a symbol of oppression rather than freedom. He makes this argument while examining both the economic and military legacy of expansionism and imperialism. This approach is, of course, a difficult one for many Americans to understand. After all, we have a president who seems incapable of self-reflection. He can think of no mistakes that he has made on his watch, and in the wake of the 9/11 attacks he did not call on the American people to reflect upon the root causes of this tragedy. Rather, he ordered military action, reduced the terrorists to “evil doers,” and called upon the American people to continue their extensive habits of consumption.

Churchill’s rhetorical excess of labeling those who worked at the towers little Eichmanns certainly diverted attention from his larger argument—not to mention how the passengers on the doomed airlines fail to fit into this line of analysis. Nevertheless, the university environment is the arena where the debates regarding the nature of the American experience should be taking place. The state university is not simply a place where the conventional wisdom of the state’s population is to be reflected. It is rather an institution where scholars should feel comfortable in putting forth unpopular ideas and having them compete in the “marketplace” of ideas—an analogy with which those on the political right should be comfortable. Rather than simply calling for Churchill’s ouster at Colorado, the university model should provide for a debate of the ideas raised by his scholarship.

Does not Lt. General Mattis deserve the same respect and freedom of expression? The problem is that Mattis is speaking as a representative of the United States government, while a professor at the state university is hardly a spokesperson for state policy. If Lt. General Mattis wants to secure a university position, then in the spirit of academic debate he may engage the ideas of Churchill.

However, the current silence regarding Mattis, while television commentators call for the firing of Churchill, suggests that freedom of speech and intellectual inquiry in this country are in danger.