I'll Jump Right In

Since this web log picks up where my first one leaves off, I'm won't risk boring you with a lengthy intro. I'm here to discuss events in my life that I consider worth remembering, and events in the larger world that merit further examination.

As to the former, tomorrow I go for a 3-night/4-day solo walk in two wilderness areas in the North Carolina mountains. I'd planned to start today, but the likelihood of 100+ mph winds tonight convinced me to put it off one day.

As to the latter, I just watched about an hour of video of Ward Churchill speaking at the University of Colorado in Boulder, clarifying remarks of his that have inflamed an explosive controversy. For now the video is available here, but that's probably only for the next couple of weeks. The text is available here.

Much about Mr. Churchill invites controversy. He claims to be a Native American, and to have seen combat in Vietnam, but the American Indian Movement (AIM) denounces him, and I've seen a few conservative challenges to his military service. I don't know the facts, so I'm not going to judge.

His credibility isn't the issue here, anyway. Analysis, not factual assertions, put him in the recent spotlight. It comes down to two words: 'little Eichmanns.' That's how Churchill referred to the corporate employees who died in the World Trade Center towers on 9/11; he compared them to the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann. In his own words:

I said...that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.

Churchill asserts that American corporations and the US government commit crimes against humanity comparable to those committed by the Nazis. I find it hard to refute the point. Over the years, we've overthrown democratic governments, we've propped up repressive regimes, we've enforced sanctions and we've waged wars. In so doing, we may have killed more than the Nazis killed. I will offer the qualification that the Nazis were intentionally trying to eradicate an entire race of people, just because of who those people were, while the great Western military/corporate juggernaut kills in the processes of making money, and of creating conditions favorable for making more money. So--the Nazis meant to kill; we didn't/don't mean to kill, but mistakes are made, shit happens, and people die. Still, he's right: the US government and American corporations have a lot to answer for.

Churchill also claims that the employees of those corporations (he calls them 'technocrats') are as guilty of the same crimes as the companies they work for. This is a lot harder to swallow. Are employees responsible for the actions of their employers? Given the level of conglomeration in today's business world, and the pace of mergers and acquisitions, can employees even reasonably be expected to know everything their employers are doing (or even who their employers are)? In this age of downsizing and outsourcing, can workers afford to be so choosy as to refuse, or walk away from, a good job?

Churchill makes a strong distinction between the towers' 'technocrats' employed by major corporations--wittingly or not, active parts of the mechanisms of empire--and the "children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by" who were also killed in the attack. He points out that the US military certainly would have considered the Iraqi equivalent of the WTC (and its technocrats) to be legitimate military targets; innocent people (e.g, firemen) killed in such an attack would have been written off as collateral damage.

He's right again about that.

He sums up with this:

The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-11-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else.

Yeah, We the People, right? Technically, we're responsible for all the actions of our government--after all, we elected 'em.

So, this is my new blog. I'll try to make it worth your while to drop by. Oh--about the name: it was the first thing that popped into my head. I'm not a 'warrior' in any hawkish sense. I'm willing to stand up and fight, if necessary, for what I believe, but I'd rather win without fighting. Still, Warrior of the Woods--has a nice ring, doesn't it? And the acronym: WoW!

Enough for now. Time to pack for the woods. I should be back Monday or so.