O'Reilly Show Poll on Whether Churchill Should Be Fired

His book is #105 on amazon.com sales charts today 2/5/05

THOMAS ACAMPORA, STUDENT: It is at the heart of this academic community that we engage views that we don't find that hurt us, that upset us, that make us angry.

HINOJOSA: Nancy Rabinowitz that invited Churchill to the campus.

NANCY RABINOWITZ, PROFESSOR, HAMILTON COLLEGE: The irony is that this was a conversation that was to be held about the limits of dissent. And now we see the limits enforced by the terrorist threat of violence.

HINOJOSA: The debate also continued on the pages of the campus newspaper, which questioned whether a college should let violence silence speech.

BRITTEN CHASE, COLUMNIST, THE SPECTATOR: People can threaten violence now. And they can have an impact on what will be said on the college campus.

HINOJOSA: Even Matthew Coppo is unhappy with the outcome.

COPPO: It is the worst possible ending to this whole thing. I mean, if he had come, it almost would have been better just for we would have his free speech. And we would probably have a silent vigil just honoring everyone who died. And no violence whatsoever was -- no one wanted any violence. And for this -- for it to end this way was pretty terrible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: Once again that was Maria Hinojosa giving us a sense of how college folks are reacting to this. Coming up next, you're going to meet the man at the center of this growing firestorm. Ward Churchill joins us from Denver in an exclusive interview in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAHN: And welcome back. As we've seen, Professor Ward Churchill has stirred up a firestorm of controversy. He joins me now from Boulder, Colorado.

Professor, I wanted to start off by reading part of your essay. You say that it has been distorted since you wrote it. And I want to read, specifically, what you wrote about September 11, 2001.

Quote, "The Pentagon building and those inside compromise military targets, pure and simple. As those in the World Trade Center, they were civilians of a sort, but innocent, give me a break. They formed a technocratic core at the very heart of America's global financial . to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved. And they did so both willingly and knowingly..."

Then you go on to say. "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting the participation upon the little Eichmann's inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the Twin Towers, I'd be interesting in hearing about it."

Those are direct quotes from your essay. You have described it as stream of consciousness writing right after the attacks. Are there any words you would change in that today?

WARD CHURCHILL, COLORADO UNIVERSITY: Actually not. I would probably add a few words to explain the meaning of the "little Eichmanns" phrase. But in terms of changing it, I wouldn't. The reference was to -- the thesis on banality of evil that was produced by Hannah Arendt a long time ago.

ZAHN: Let's come back to your "little Eichmann" comment for a moment. We're going to put that back up on the screen so you can help us understand what you really meant.

In essence you're calling the 9/11 victims little Eichmann, referring to Adolf Eichmann, of course, who organized the deportation of Jews into the concentration camps. Can you understand why 9/11 families are outraged by this as well as anybody who has any experience with the Holocaust?

CHURCHILL: Actually, I think you're wrong in some part on both counts. But, yes, in general, I can understand the sense of outrage and that's what I was attempting to engender. I wanted to engender a response comparable by that experienced and manifested by peoples elsewhere when they are treated in a similar fashion as a matter of course in the U.S.

ZAHN: How can you possibly equate...

(CROSSTALK) ZAHN: ...professor, how can you possibly equate the activities going on in the World Trade Center, people waiting on tables at the windows on the World Restaurant, police officers on duty that day, stockbrokers, with the actions of Adolf Eichmann?

CHURCHILL: You are, I believe, mixing apples and oranges there. I don't believe that there...

ZAHN: I'm just reading what you wrote.

CHURCHILL: Any reasonable definition by which you can consider a food service worker or janitor or even a fireman or a random passerby as being a member of a technocratic core. How do you to define pushing a broom as being a technical operation? It was rather clearly stated who I was talking about.

ZAHN: How do you say that, sir? I'm going to put that back up one more time on the screen.

CHURCHILL: OK.

ZAHN: I'm curious how you think of someone reading this would see any differentiation between anybody working in the building that day. I mean, basically you said befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the Twin Towers.

CHURCHILL: And immediately before that I had made reference to a technocratic core. Is there a definition that I'm unaware of by which a janitor becomes a technician? Or a food service worker become a technician of empire? It's reasonably restrictive articulation. It could perhaps be clearer.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: But what can you say to them to make that clearer? What would you want people to understand?

CHURCHILL: The people who perform the technical functions that results in the impoverishment, immiseration and ultimately the deaths of millions in order to maximize profit. and I don't believe that there is any reasonable definition by which food service workers, firemen, janitors, children, random passerby fit that definition. And it is clearly articulated. You just read it.

But I would have gone further to explain the Eichmann reference to be a framed by Hannah Arendt that Eichmann was essentially a bureaucrat, a a technician. He killed no one, but he performed technical functions with a great degree of proficiency and full knowledge that the outcome of his endeavor would be essentially mass murder.

ZAHN: Let me come back...

CHURCHILL: And I don't believe it is any great mystery that there is cost and consequence to the way the U.S. does businesses work as usual and its projection of economic dominance upon the planet. I think that's a reasonably clear proposition.

ZAHN: Let me come back to the victims of 9/11 one more time. Because I have had the opportunity to speak with many outraged family members. They have read this essay over and over again. And here is what really upset them.

You went on in the essay to say that 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, they were not fanatics and that their actions were not insane but actually, in your words, a normal response. I don't know how anybody could view a terrorist act as a normal response.

CHURCHILL: I think I also used the term gallant in that connection. And it was done as part of a strategy to evoke the response that has been evoked. I was using the same sort of nomenclature and definition that would, for example, designate someone who is sitting at a computer console on a missile frigate 1,500 miles away from a target pushing a button to send death and destruction down upon whoever happens to be in the target zone, be they a civilian, be they noncivilian, whatever, and then designate them a hero.

ZAHN: Well you have succeed in evoking a response, sir.

And how can you not say that your writings constitute being proterrorist? You've heard the governor of New York accuse you of that, the governor of Colorado and even some of the folks you just heard in the pieces we aired.

CHURCHILL: I think terrorism as a phenomena should be quelled. But if you deal with any phenomena, you first must define, and more importantly understand it. And what I'm saying this is a perfectly comprehensive response to the way the U.S. projects itself in the world. It is as simple as that.

When you are not only causing the incurrence of -- when you're causing children to die in mass numbers somewhere else and you refer that as to being something worth the price, or when you designate the civilian casualties in another country as being so much collateral damage, you've utterly devalue and dehumanize those people in addition to killing them.

ZAHN: But, sir, you're not saying that there is a parallel universe between terrorists purposefully striking innocent civilians and governments -- are you accusing U.S. government of purposefully killing innocent Iraqi women and children? Is that what you're saying here?

CHURCHILL: I do know that the Pentagon sits and does computations on the extent of collateral damage to be anticipated. And that collateral damage is actually human beings, civilians, noncombatants. And yes, they are factoring it in.

ZAHN: Factoring in. But does that mean they want to kill them? That they want to do that on purpose? Or that happens as a result of a military target.

CHURCHILL: I don't know the people of 9/11 specifically wanted to kill everybody that was killed. It was just worth it to them in order to do what it was they decided it was necessary to do that bystanders be killed. And that's essentially the same mentality, the same rubric.

And yes, I do believe that that is official state terrorism when you do computations of collateral damage. I also believe the United States is conscious that it is a war crime and it doesn't care, because there is no one to impose the rule of law upon it. It acts as a unilateralist fashion.

ZAHN: All right. So, you're telling me tonight, in spite of everything you've written, you're against terrorism?

CHURCHILL: I am against terrorism.

ZAHN: So if you're against terrorism -- I'm sorry, I still don't understand. You're saying on one hand the terrorism directed against the United States was justified. So, why isn't that being proterrorist?

CHURCHILL: I didn't say they were justified. I didn't actually say that.

ZAHN: They had it coming, basically what you said.

CHURCHILL: I didn't actually say that either. You can adduce from the Eichmann metaphor or analogy what you might believe to be the fate they had coming, but I didn't actually say that. What I did say...

ZAHN: Yeah, but it sounds to me you just said you wanted to provoke us. That's what you wanted us to induce, isn't it?

CHURCHILL: I wanted you to be provoked, you in a generic sense, to understand the nature of the response elsewhere when people are treated that way. This is not my voice, this is the voice of logic attending the event I was hearing the morning of 9/11.

And remember, this piece was originally written on 9/11 at the request of Indie (ph) Journal. It said, we need a gut response to this very rapidly.

And CNN no less than any other network before the buildings came down was already describing this as being senseless. And I'm saying to myself how can they know that? Senseless means with no purpose. How do we know they had no purpose? We can agree with it, we can disagree with it, but that's an absolute misrepresentation of the reality. What is the purpose and why? That's what...

ZAHN: All right, I want to come back...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: I want to come back to the whole issue surrounding 9/11 families. Tonight, you said you wouldn't take back anything...

CHURCHILL: Actually, I would like to finish that answer, if you don't mind.

ZAHN: ... you've written. Well, let me just say this. Tonight, I think you're more clearly laying out what you in your judgment constitute victims on 9/11. Do you think you owe an apology to the families who read the same essay...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: ... I read who thought that you were referring to their loved ones, the waiters in restaurants, the janitors in the building, as somehow being responsible for kind of fueling the military industrial complex?

CHURCHILL: I don't believe I owe them an apology, because I don't believe I included their families, the people you're talking about, in. I think some other people have very conscientiously attempted to put those words in my mouth. And I think it may be that quite a number of people who have been impugning things to me that I didn't actually say could well and truly owe an apology. Media sources that have me calling for the deaths of millions of Americans. Nowhere in there do I do that.

My object is to figure out if we're going to solve this problem, how to go about it. And first thing is to understand the nature of the response. And my thesis basically was that any people subjected to the kind of degradation, devaluation and dehumanization, say the Iraqis, or say the Palestinians, will either respond in kind, or people will respond in their name in kind. And it doesn't matter whether they're Arabs or they're Americans. And that actually in the last 10 days has been -- well, actually more like five days...

ZAHN: Right.

CHURCHILL: ... has been borne out pretty thoroughly.

ZAHN: OK...

CHURCHILL: There's terrorism being undertaken in the name of the 9/11 families (UNINTELLIGIBLE) outraged.

ZAHN: We have time for just one brief last question, professor. Do you think you're going to end up being fired?

CHURCHILL: Actually I don't.

ZAHN: You have said that if the University of Colorado does fire you, quote, "they don't want do that unless they want me owning this university." Does that constitute a threat?

CHURCHILL: I read that. I don't remember the statement, actually.

ZAHN: If -- that has been widely quoted in a number of different sources.

(CROSSTALK) ZAHN: Would you change what you said if that's what has been printed?

CHURCHILL: If that was what I said, it would be a wildly hyperbolic statement. I don't recall saying it. I have heard it said that I said it on Bill O'Reilly last night. And this is the way this whole process has been working. One media figure says something and attributes it to me, and then it is attributed by a number of other media figures to me.

ZAHN: All right, so what is the truth tonight?

CHURCHILL: I will contest the firing.

ZAHN: You will contest the firing. And would you sue the university?

CHURCHILL: I would contest the firing, certainly. Of course, I would sue the university, for breech of its own rules.

ZAHN: So you're saying tonight you never threatened the university?

CHURCHILL: In terms of my contract -- I'm threatening no one. There is a threat that something may be done to me. And I would respond if it were in fact done, but I don't know for a fact that there is anything of the sort going to be done. Do you?

ZAHN: I have no idea. I'm just observing from here.

CHURCHILL: Well, we're in the same boat there. They're not talking to me either.

ZAHN: Professor Ward Churchill. There certainly are a number of discussions going on with the regents in your state. We will be following it closely from here. Ward Churchill, thanks so much for your time tonight.

Coming up next, we turn to an entirely different subject -- a soldier bound to duty. He's had many close calls. He's made many sacrifices on the battlefield and at home. You'll meet him coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Cant argue with this guy, is Ward Chruchill a Vulcin or something?