On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Book cover for On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: reflections on the consequences of U.S. imperial arrogance and criminality (ISBN 1-902593-79-0) is a book written by controversial scholar Ward Churchill published in 2003. The "Roosting Chickens" of the title comes from a 1963 Malcolm X speech about the assassination of the U.S. president John F. Kennedy, as the violence that Kennedy did not stop "was merely a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.'"

Churchill used the term "Roosting Chickens" in a short essay Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens first published on September 12, 2001. In that article, Churchill alleged that the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States by "terrorists" were "Islamic East"'s "acts of war" against the "Crusades" waged by the "Christian West" (e.g. Arab-Israeli conflict and The First Gulf War) throughout the late 20th century.

The book is divided into three parts: (1) an expanded version of an older essay called Some People Push Back about the "ghosts of 9-11", (2) a long detailed list of foreign invasions and covert actions conducted by the US government called "The Most Peace Loving of Nations", and (3) an equally long list of instances where the US has flouted international law, particularly United Nations resolutions entitled "A Nation of Laws".

1 Background
2 Topics
3 Conclusions
4 Consequences
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Background

The original Some People Push Back essay was written one day after September 11, 2001, while the book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens was published in 2003. Neither provoked much discussion or controversy in mainstream circles.

Before the media controversy, the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights gave an honorable mention award to Churchill's volume in December 2004.

[edit] Topics

In Churchill's original Some People Push Back essay, he pointed out some practices done by the U.S. armed forces that, according to him, violated widely accepted Principles of Warfare:

1991 US "surgical" bombing of [ Iraq's ] water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival.

... it should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of "civilized" behavior -- the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers.

All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of their age group. ... In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.

Strategic bombing (since the World War II) and carpet bombing (widely used in the Vietnam War) are frequently regarded as forms of state terrorism by their critics. The "precision bombing" of Baghdad during the First Gulf War had used smart bombs and non-nuclear cruise missiles, but nonetheless claimed many civilian lives.

The "Highway of Death"

However, judged by the fact that the "collateral damages" of that war were in the order of thousands, if not more, civilian lives (e.g. the February 13, 1991 bombing), the "precision bombing" seemed not to be the case to some people. The war atrocities also included the infamous "Highway of Death" where an unknown number of defeated Iraqi soldiers and fleeing civilians were killed and buried and the equally infamous "bulldozer assault" where possibly thousands of Iraqi soldiers were buried alive during February 24-25, 1991. The deaths directly caused by the U.S. had become unbearable to many war critics. The indirect deaths caused by the decade-long sanctions were even less justifiable on the ground of humanity.

[edit] Conclusions

Since he claims that it was the U.S. who started violence in the first place, he argues that it is not unimaginable that "some people push back".

As a result of what he believes to be the nefarious effects of American foreign policy and global capitalism, Churchill believes that many of those who were killed by destruction of the World Trade Center were not "innocent civilians":

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire -- the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved -- and they did so both willingly and knowingly. (http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html)

[edit] Consequences

Although not widely publicized at the time, Churchill's remarks about World Trade Center victims became the center of considerable attention and controversy in January 2005 when Hamilton College of Clinton, New York invited him to give a speech. As a result, the speech was cancelled, citing "credible threats of violence".

In an extraordinary step, the University of Colorado Board of Regents ordered an investigation into whether Churchill should be fired, and publicly apologized for Churchill's writings about the September 11, 2001 attacks. Churchill resigned his position as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department but remained a professor.

In 2005, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder overwhelmingly picked Ward Churchill for its Teaching Recognition Award. Following the political pressure to distance themselves from Professor Churchill, the University of Colorado Alumni Association, which sponsors the award, promptly announced that they would withhold the award from Churchill. Given annually for 44 years, this is the first time the award was withheld from the person who won it.