Ward Churchill

I was listening to NPR this morning. The story was about Ward Churchill and freesom of expression on college campuses. Ward Churchill said some pretty offensive things to and about a lot of people. He postulated that the 9/11 hijackers were soldiers fighting to protect innocent men, women, and child throughout the world from the United States. He also postulated that the WTC was a legitimate military target because the CIA had an office there and that the Wall Street companies there were complicit in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. He goes on to say that 9/11 is retribution for the heavy handed way the US has acted over the 2 centuries since its inception. He lists several examples of how US policy in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, the Phillipines, wars against the Native Americans, and on killed hundreds of thousands on innocents. He wrote that it is US arrogance around the world that ultimately led the hijackers to do what they did. He said the hijackers did what they did to wake Americans up to the arrogance of the government. He goes on to list further offenses perpetrated by the FBI and the CIA. He calls George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Madeline Albright, among others, war criminals. It turns into a pretty long winded rant against almost everyone and everything in the US. I don't necessarily agree with what he says but he does make some points. The US is arrogant in its dealings with other countries. The US tells other countries to support us in the war on terrorism. If you are not with us, then you support terrorism. How arrogant is that? US policy in the Middle East has been to support corrupt governments, so that the flow of oil in unabated. The US gives lip service to democracy but doesn't support real change in Saudia Arabia or Egypt. Is it any wonder that citizens in these countries don't trust the US? The US has, for generations, used the resources of other countries to its advantage but has not in any constructive way given back to those countries. The citizens of the Middle East and the world are fed up with the arrogance of the US. The US has become a pariah state. Why? Because the US feels it can do whatever it wants, take whatever resources it wants, and tell the rest of the world what it expects them to do. Well, the rest of the world is telling the US a great, big, fat, emphatic "No." A small group of men just did it in a very spectacular way.

North Korea

Let me see if I have this right.. Iraq, which didn't have nuclear weapons, didn't have biological weapons, didn't have chemical weapons, was invaded by the US because Iraq wouldn't meet its international obligations to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea has admitted to having nukes, refuses to meet an international obligations as laid out by the UN, but is in no danger of being invaded by the US.

Could it be that the US actaully knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction so thought it would be a cake walk? (Why else would Don Rumsfeld not plan for post-invasion, if Iraq wasn't going to be a cake walk?) What an easy way to secure vast oil fields and natural gas reserves, and get new military bases in the Middle East, than to invade a relatively defenseless country. Does North Korea have oil and gas reserves? No. So why invade? The US can use all the diplomatic means necessary to solve the problem. Apparently all the diplomatic means were successful in Iraq but someone forgot to tell George Bush.