Comments on: More on Ward Churchill

By: kstreetfriend

kstreetfriend — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:41:38 +0000

Please note the following. Introduction: In a Pittsburgh federal court a well connected corporate crony has suggested a novice “integrity” free speech argument and the legal question is waddling without any legal precedent in need of an activist court. Creating the free speech crisis is a “red herring” to draw attention away from the plain and clear evidence of the Pittsburgh Federal Court proceeding (best example of the corruption). Ward Churchill was a relatively unknown professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, until Bill O’Reilly reported a piece about him and requested his audience to make a fuss. His provacative essay was written more than three years ago. The Western Pennsylvania connection: Ms. ElizaBETH Hoffman, native of Bryn Mawr, is the President of Colorado University. Go to http://www.hss.caltech.edu/Photos/Alumni/HoffmanElizabeth.jpg and/or http://www.colorado.edu/Carillon/volume47/images/1.jpg to view her picture. Ms. Mary BETH (Rue) Kotcella Buchanan, native of Roscoe, is the U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania. Go to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2002-02-26/PH_2002-02-26_iattorney-b.jpg to view her picture. Background: I attended undergraduate school with Ms. Buchanan. At the Pennsylvania University I succesfully re-established (and served as president) the pre-law society and graduated in 1983. Here Ms. Buchanan would become interested in the law. She graduated after me in 1984. In addition, I was listed in Who’s Who Among American Colleges and Universities, and given the 1983 Progressive Leadership Award, and 1983 Distinguished Honor Award. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1988 Ms. Buchanan secured a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill, Jr. Judge Cohill is the Western District Judge responsible for enforcing a consent decree governing United States of America v. Port Authority of Allegheny County, Docket No. 91-CV-1694. However, he turned a blind eye to my case Docket No. 95-CV-00339. I had organized (secure a union) a political sub-division. During that same year members of the state judiciary were charged and convicted for violating my civil rights (fixing cases against me in retaliation of Docket No. 95-CV-00339). In a case related to Docket No. 95-CV-00339, an alleged EEOC investigative file was prematurely purged and the U.S. Department of Labor refused delivery of its copy despite a subpoena, FOIA Request and Motion to Compel. See Docket No. 98-CV-230. That is, the Department of Labor closed its investigation based on the alleged EEOC decision. But, I had proffered to the court EEOC writings that demonstrated no investigation was conducted. Discussion: At issue is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The Bush administration is attempting to change the 50 percent rule. That is, financial aid is available for postsecondary education provided at a college or university that has at least 50 percent of its students campus-based. Corporations have paid Senators and Congress men and women well, attempting to change the 50 percent rule. The rule is necessary to prevent fraud (absentee students and/or diploma mills). It appears at least three corporations have abused the administration’s Distance Education Demonstration that wavied the 50 percent rule. The Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. In addition, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems. Nonetheless, the S.E.C. and FBI investigation is just spin to make it appear the administration is doing its job. The Pittsburgh case involves Kaplan, Inc., which is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. For-profit postsecondary education has turned the company around. Individuals far more powerful than Martha Steward have made millions. Thus the current unexplained campaign against free speech appears to be little more than another Madison Avenue scheme to control any discussion.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 12:25:53 +0000

The liar Dan Simon: i) claimed on this thread that he had defended ‘the use of interrogation techniques that some have defined as “torture”.’ When five consecutive sentences from a post by him are quoted in which he defines those techniques as torture, without the scare quote, he attempts to hide his lie behind verbiage. ii)Omitted to mention that when he was directly asked by me on the previous thread whether he supported such ‘techniques’ as (among those I specified) whipping, beating, the use of dogs, or rape, he refused to say that he opposed the use of such techiques, merely expressing a pious wish that hooding, sleep deprivation etc would prove ‘most effective’, but not ruling out the use of the more extreme stuff if necessary. iii) Tells another clear lie about Donald Johnson. Simon writes apropos Donald Johnson:’*What you haven’t been clear on is exactly who the “little Eichmanns” are, and what should be done with—or to—them.* At times, you draw a clear line between those who commit what you consider to be horrible crimes, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those who simply advocate or support such misdeeds. At other times, though—as above—you lump them all together as “Eichmanns”, implying that you consider them equally worthy of punishment. ‘Frankly, it appears you want to have it both ways: vigorously defending everyone’s right to say even the most terrible things, while at the same time scoring rhetorical points by equating the opinions you abhor with actual criminal acts—without considering the implications of such an equation.’ This is the Johnson point he was responding to:’In case you missed my previous point, I don’t think people who hold morally abhorrent views are guilty of a crime that mere humans have the right to punish…People who act on their beliefs and write legal defenses of torture or set policies for torturing people or who actually practice torture are, of course, guilty of crimes and should be tried in court and if found guilty, sent to prison. But not tortured or killed or assassinated.’ Johnson, unlike Simon, writes clear and comprehensible prose. He is saying, for the benefit of the semi-literate Simon, that if you say as a private individual, that the US should torture prisoners, you are expressing a morally repugnant view, but the expression of a morally repugnant view is not a criminal act and cannot be punished; if you are in a position of responsibility for prisoners and you either torture prisoners or facilitate their torture, then this is a criminal act under US and international law and you should be punished. Re the type of punishment, Johnson made it utterly clear for the ignorant Simon: People who act on their beliefs and write legal defenses of torture or set policies for torturing people or who actually practice torture are, of course, guilty of crimes and should be tried in court and if found guilty, sent to prison. But not tortured or killed or assassinated. Johnson supports lawful penalties imposed after a fair trial by a properly constituted court- he explicitly condemns the mass-murdering atrocities of nihilistic fundamentalist terrorists. Simon claims that Johnson is conflating the legal status of those who express support of torture but can’t put their warped desires into practice with those who do actually torture or order acts of torture. That is a clear lie, by a man whose posts contain very little else.

By: Louis Proyect

Louis Proyect — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 02:55:14 +0000

Apparently there’s a professor named Ralph Luker who is kind of upset because I have not given the proper respect to Henry Farrell and Timothy Burke at the Crooked Timber and Cliopatria blogs. These are group blogs run by left-leaning academics, with at least one non-academic on Crooked Timber. Luker himself is the author of “The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912,” which is ranked #694,883 at amazon.com. I am not sure whether he reaches a bigger audience through book sales or though visits to the Cliopatria blog, but we are not talking public intellectual in the Edmund Wilson or Manning Marable sense. In any case, I wasn’t aware that Luker was aware of my existence until I noticed a bunch of referrals to my blog from the Cliopatria website. Usually the referrals are from Ken McLeod or Lenin’s Tomb, so I was curious to see why people would be going to Unrepentant Marxist via Cliopatria. It’s not as disconcerting as the referrals I get from http://www.navy.mil, etc., but I had to wonder what was up. After strolling over to Cliopatria, I discovered that Luker was raking me over the coals, which I really don’t mind. I rake people like him over the coals nearly every day, but at least I have the common courtesy to cc them when I do. Luker wrote this: But there are Lefty trolls, too, of course. David Salmanson and I ran into one – Louis Proyect – at Crooked Timber the other day. Proyect is an obscure former Troskyite, a computer technician at Columbia University, and the manager of a Marxist listserv. When Henry Farrell criticized Tim Burke’s critique of Ward Churchill’s work and cited Burke’s response to that criticism and Thomas Brown’s essay criticizing Churchill’s claims about the Mandan Indians and the smallpox epidemic of 1837, Proyect trolled. Farrell and Burke were “mediocrities” and Farrell a “useful idiot.” full: http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html Luker feels that he and his co-thinkers are vindicated because I became persuaded that Ward Churchill had failed to back up his charge that smallpox blankets were used as biological weapons against the Mandan Indian in 1837. He is not happy, however, that I was far more disturbed by a kind of holocaust denial that is implicit in Thomas Brown’s attack rather than Churchill’s faulty scholarship. He writes: What interests me about the way Churchill, Malkin, and some of Churchill’s apologists use history is that if you can find a precedent for an action in the past (Malkin’s Japanese internment; Churchill on Lord Amherst’s use of smallpox) it becomes, on the one hand, a convenient excuse for similar action in the present; or, on the other hand, justification for blatant distortion of history because we know that there was holocaust intent anyway. Proyect makes his support of Churchill’s holocaust argument quite explicit here. If you doubt it, you are a “holocaust denier” and, yet, Proyect is finally persuaded that, in this case, the evidence denies it. Think about it. If past precedent justifies present action or blatant distortion of the historical record, we can repeat the 19th and 20th century’s horrors; and we have, indeed, bought the post-modern notion that all the world’s merely a text, to be construed as we will. Trying to decipher such clumsy prose is a daunting task. To start with, the opening sentence is typical overloaded academic prose that one scratches one’s head to make sense of: “What interests me about the way Churchill, Malkin, and some of Churchill’s apologists use history is that if you can find a precedent for an action in the past (Malkin’s Japanese internment; Churchill on Lord Amherst’s use of smallpox) it becomes, on the one hand, a convenient excuse for similar action in the present; or, on the other hand, justification for blatant distortion of history because we know that there was holocaust intent anyway.” Whenever you see a 74 word sentence that tries to make a number of divergent points, you can only conclude that the author is struggling to make a point but lacks the command of the English language to accomplish. Or, you can also conclude that the author’s ideas are just half-baked. Finally, it may be the case that the author wants to conceal his true meaning. Luker seems guilty on all counts, but I would not recommend a jail sentence. I am really quite liberal on the topic of free speech. For Luker, the criterion of intent is critical to people like Ward Churchill and me. But I specifically said that I come at the question differently from both Brown and Churchill, who both believe that intentionality is key. For me, it is not so important. As a Marxist, the question of what is in the mind of a particular colonist is not so important. I am far more interested in the objective, structural effect of certain virulent strains of colonialism than I am in what is in the mind of the colonizer. For example, Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennet’s “Thy Will Be Done: the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil” makes clear that the genocidal attack on indigenous peoples who stood in the way of oil exploitation was based at least partially on liberal ideology. The Standard Oil family was liberal, but they made common cause with Wycliff missionaries. In other words, you had the same lethal combination of the dollar and the bible that was visited on people like the Mandan. Now it doesn’t really matter what was in the mind of Rockefeller or the Wycliff missionaries. When you systematically destroy the means of reproduction of an entire people in the pursuit of profit, it is no excuse that you meant them no harm. Capitalism’s course among hunting and gathering peoples has been genocidal worldwide. In distinction to primitive accumulation among more advanced peoples (speaking strictly in terms of the means of production) like the Chinese or the Indians, the effect on the North American Indian, the South Pacific islanders, the native Australian, etc. has been genocidal. Among anthropologists on the left like the late Stanley Diamond, this is not controversial. Among people who appear to have a commitment to denying that there was a genocide against American Indians, it is controversial. To repeat myself, I feel that 90 percent of the hatred directed toward Churchill is a function of this rather than a failure to adequately document events that took place in the Dakotas 168 years ago.

By: William C Carlotti

William C Carlotti — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:29:03 +0000

the “little Eichman’s” In reading the various comments regarding Ward Churchill’s work examining the matter of genocide that included that of a particular group of Native Americans, I am reminded of some comments made by Kirk Douglas when he was made aware of comments by Rabbi David Wolpe, spiritual leader of Conservative congregation Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, and the author of numerous popular books on Judaism. According to the Rabbi, “…virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.” It was an opinion duplicated by Ze’ev Herzog, Professor of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, which created considerable controversy amongst many of his colleagues in the archeological scientific community. According to Herzog, ”This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.” Kirk Douglas’ response was, “The story of the Exodus, as an actor, I find interesting and dramatic. I am not concerned with the archaeological authenticity of the story: I am interested in what the metaphor teaches me about my own spiritual journey. And Judaism is the language I speak, the path I walk, the origin and the destination of that journey.” So, to make the matter clear, the genocide of the Native Peoples that were the indigenous occupants of the lands of the United States was the deliberate and intended consequence of the invasion, occupation, and expropriation of the land and its resources and, for me, one detail more or less, one footnote more or less, one split hair more or less, is inconsequential in the mass of the real and substantive evidence of the genocide. What really interests me is Ward Churchill’s use of the term “little Eichman’s” in his analysis of the consequences of United States operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. I don’t know if Professor Churchill came to the concept independently of Hannah Arendt, but it is clear to me that he has either embraced or independently arrived at her clear exposition of the “banality of evil” in her book “Eichman In Jerusalem, A Report On The Banality Of Evil”. She portrayed Eichmann as a bureaucrat who did his duty, followed orders, and was part of the matrix that consummated in the nazi atrocities, rather than a raving, vicious, ideologically, and philosophically driven, demonic anti-semite. It is a portrait that is uniquely insightful. Instead of the personification of “evil”, Arendt argued, Eichman was the icon for the “banality of evil” and consequently represented a danger that was not only applicable to the political confines of the Nazi era but could extend beyond its borders. Professor Churchill makes the assertion that the clandestine operatives, technocrats, bureaucrats of the CIA operating in the World Trade Towers were of the ilk of the “banality of evil”, little Eichman’s engaged in a multiplicity of tasks in support of the United States involvement in the Middle East. From my point of view, Professor Churchill’s characterization is as viable a concept for discussion and evaluation as the notion put forward in some quarters that the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq has increased the volume and intensity of the opposition to the United States. It is certainly a concept deserving more than a knee-jerk reaction. Bill

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 17:23:31 +0000

What he did say, essentially, is that among those who died there there were men and women responsible for suffering and death in other parts of the world, and that the truly innocent who died there could legitimately have their deaths described as “collateral damage” – as so many other innocent deaths have been…. And that’s what’s most dangerous about what he said. Because it’s true, and it’s incontrovertibly true. Well, I’ll believe it might conceivably be “incontrovertibly true” if you can do the following: 1) Identify specific people—even a small number of them—among those killed in the WTC on 9/11, who were provably “responsible for suffering and death in other parts of the world”. 2) Present even a shred of evidence that the intention of the 9/11 conspirators was to target those people, rather than to sow fear among all Americans and spark a financial crisis in America. 3) Demonstrate that the 9/11 conspirators applied even the slightest effort (let alone the US military’s level of effort) to limiting “collateral damage” to innocents. If you can do all of these things, then I’ll concede that Churchill’s point, as you interpreted it, may have a grain of truth in it. Otherwise, I would consider it quite appropriate to replace your phrase, “incontrovertibly true”, with the phrase, “a steaming pile of dung.”

By: Ajax Bucky

Ajax Bucky — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:53:14 +0000

dan simon- We might agree that any discussion about “free speech” centering, as this one does, on a particular speech by a particular individual, should have to concern itself with what was actually said in that speech. The disdain for Churchill you share with so many others left and right proceeds from his assertion that the people who died in the WTC towers on September 11, 2001 had it coming. But he didn’t say that, or anything even near it. What he did say, essentially, is that among those who died there there were men and women responsible for suffering and death in other parts of the world, and that the truly innocent who died there could legitimately have their deaths described as “collateral damage” – as so many other innocent deaths have been. It’s dangerous ground to impute sentiment to anyone else’s speech, especially someone as intentionally controversial as Churchill is; but my reading of the essay in question, and his subsequent responses to the outrage and clamor for his head, is that he was not saying those collateral deaths were a good thing, and excusable, but the opposite. What I hear him saying is: “Here. This is what it is. This is what it’s like. This is what they’re doing, and have been doing for years, in your names.” And that’s what’s most dangerous about what he said. Because it’s true, and it’s incontrovertibly true. That is exactly what it’s like. Lt. General “Killing Can Be Fun” Mattis, in response to the massacre of men, women, and children at a wedding party in Iraq last May, said, “I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don’t have to apologise for the conduct of my men.” More specifically his defense was that there were “more than two dozen military-age males” killed – being military-aged and male and Iraqi being enough to justify execution in that context – and the rest of the people that died were simply written off as collateral damage. That one incident of course happened two and a half years after the WTC attack, but it fits seamlessly into a timeline of official and covert American actions that are impossible to reconcile with the self-image of violated innocence that’s the source of the public’s outrage at Churchill’s essay. The more private outrage, that sees the threat in Churchill’s truth, is a different story.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 23:26:52 +0000

“Suspected terrorists” can be tortured, it says. Yeah, that’s Eichmann territory. Don’t worry about what I think about you—take a good long look at yourself and the people you defend and see if this is who you want to be. I’ve been pretty clear what I think about 9/11 and Churchill’s morally indefensible remarks, so either you didn’t bother to read what I said before attacking or were only pretending to believe I endorsed his comment about 9/11 despite the fact that I said precisely the opposite in this thread. Yes, Donald, you made it clear that you don’t consider the 3000 victims of 9/11 to be “little Eichmanns”, and that you don’t approve of Churchill’s saying so. What you haven’t been clear on is exactly who the “little Eichmanns” are, and what should be done with—or to—them. At times, you draw a clear line between those who commit what you consider to be horrible crimes, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those who simply advocate or support such misdeeds. At other times, though—as above—you lump them all together as “Eichmanns”, implying that you consider them equally worthy of punishment. Frankly, it appears you want to have it both ways: vigorously defending everyone’s right to say even the most terrible things, while at the same time scoring rhetorical points by equating the opinions you abhor with actual criminal acts—without considering the implications of such an equation. Now, let me be the first to concede that dishonest rhetoric is not a crime, and shouldn’t be punished (except perhaps by ridicule). But it’s not a great credit to the perpetrator, either. And in a comment thread about “free speech”, fudging the distinction between supportive expression and action is particularly suspect.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:46:00 +0000

I see no evidence that Dan defended torture ‘under very limited circumstances’. In fact, the quotation you snipped was from a comment I made disputing the claim—repeatedly made in that comment thread—that an American policy of torture would be, in strictly pragmatic terms, counterproductive. (Hence my use of the phrase, “as a matter of cold calculation.”) I stand by my argument. However, it is not, and clearly was never meant to be, a moral defense of torture. As to his comment that he has defended ‘the use of interrogation techniques that some have defined as “torture”’- that wins some kind of prize for lying. Dan, you defined those techniques as torture. Anyone to cares to follow the link Dan Hardie was gracious enough to provide, will also find the following quotation from a later comment of mine:

I could have been coy, and claimed to be against “torture”, intending to distinguish between the infliction of severe pain and other forms of harsh treatment. However, since I myself don’t know where exactly the line should be drawn, nor whether the most effective information extraction techniques ever cross it, I deliberately chose not to take that escape route. Instead, I’ll just reiterate my points: 1) Under extreme circumstances, it might well be necessary—even morally so—to inflict very harsh treatment on detainees, (only) for the purpose of extracting their cooperation. Depending on the defintion of “torture”, it might (or might not) apply to some of these forms of harsh treatment. 2) In contexts where such harsh treatment is already commonplace, its relatively indiscriminate use on detainees most likely has negligible direct, negative practical consequences. However, there still are obvious moral arguments for restricting its use to a (hopefully) very few extreme cases, even in those contexts. 3) Because the gradations of severity of treatment and necessity of its imposition are arbitrarily fine, distinguishing among them requires extremely careful examination and discussion of the moral and practical consequences of of any particular choice of distinction. It only hinders such careful consideration simply to proclaim all harsh treatment to be torture, and all torture to be so unthinkable that anyone who is willing even to contemplate its use must therefore be subhumanly evil.

Now, some readers may find my position wrong, or even morally reprehensible. But I’ve never misrepresented it.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:44:30 +0000

I could have been coy, and claimed to be against “torture”, intending to distinguish between the infliction of severe pain and other forms of harsh treatment. However, since I myself don’t know where exactly the line should be drawn, nor whether the most effective information extraction techniques ever cross it, I deliberately chose not to take that escape route. Instead, I’ll just reiterate my points: 1) Under extreme circumstances, it might well be necessary—even morally so—to inflict very harsh treatment on detainees, (only) for the purpose of extracting their cooperation. Depending on the defintion of “torture”, it might (or might not) apply to some of these forms of harsh treatment. 2) In contexts where such harsh treatment is already commonplace, its relatively indiscriminate use on detainees most likely has negligible direct, negative practical consequences. However, there still are obvious moral arguments for restricting its use to a (hopefully) very few extreme cases, even in those contexts. 3) Because the gradations of severity of treatment and necessity of its imposition are arbitrarily fine, distinguishing among them requires extremely careful examination and discussion of the moral and practical consequences of of any particular choice of distinction. It only hinders such careful consideration simply to proclaim all harsh treatment to be torture, and all torture to be so unthinkable that anyone who is willing even to contemplate its use must therefore be subhumanly evil.

Now, some readers may find my position wrong, or even morally reprehensible. But I’ve never misrepresented it.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 17:21:48 +0000

Donald, Dan Simon, the liar, is indeed a morally disgusting human being. Anyone wishing to check whether my quotation of Dan is accurate should go to this link: http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002944.html The liar Dan Simon’s first pro-torture post on that thread comes at 8.04pm on 4 December.

By: Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 17:16:59 +0000

Dan, I wasn’t aware of your existence until you said you defended torture. Now you seem concerned for the honor of those who equated Abu Ghraib with fraternity pranks and Dan Hardie’s quote of you, if accurate, is pretty damning. “Suspected terrorists” can be tortured, it says. Yeah, that’s Eichmann territory. Don’t worry about what I think about you—take a good long look at yourself and the people you defend and see if this is who you want to be. I’ve been pretty clear what I think about 9/11 and Churchill’s morally indefensible remarks, so either you didn’t bother to read what I said before attacking or were only pretending to believe I endorsed his comment about 9/11 despite the fact that I said precisely the opposite in this thread. Since I spent much of 9/11 wondering if any friends or loved ones had been killed, and not in a calm frame of mind either, I can safely say I didn’t appreciate his attitude. People who hold morally abhorrent positions are a dime a dozen. In the Arab world many think suicide bombing is okay, and in America it’s torture, along with a number of other morally disgusting policies we’ve pursued. In case you missed my previous point, I don’t think people who hold morally abhorrent views are guilty of a crime that mere humans have the right to punish. (If you’re religious, you might want to worry about the standards of a higher authority, though). People who act on their beliefs and write legal defenses of torture or set policies for torturing people or who actually practice torture are, of course, guilty of crimes and should be tried in court and if found guilty, sent to prison. But not tortured or killed or assassinated.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 16:17:25 +0000

Dan Simon today: ‘I have—on Crooked Timber, in fact—defended, under very limited circumstances, the use of interrogation techniques that some have defined as “torture”.’ Dan Simon on 3rd December 2004, on the K. Healy CT thread ‘Freedom on the march’: ‘Americans have no interest that I can see in restraining their use of torture against non-American suspected terrorists. The organizations to which these terrorists belong would not hesitate to use torture on Americans—or, for that matter, kill them outright at every opportunity—so there’s no prospect of a mutual agreement that would trade away the use of torture in return for greater protection of Americans. And as long as a clear distinction is made between American citizens and non-Americans, the risk of torture being used on any of the voters to whom the torturers are accountable is negligible. Thus for Americans to give up the use of torture against non-American detainees captured by the American military would be, as a matter of cold calculation, highly counterproductive. ‘Even more counterproductive, then, would be the deliberate refusal to use evidence already gathered via torture.’ I see no evidence that Dan defended torture ‘under very limited circumstances’. As to his comment that he has defended ‘the use of interrogation techniques that some have defined as “torture”’- that wins some kind of prize for lying. Dan, you defined those techniques as torture. Read your own prose, quoted above- which is, I know a pretty cruel and inhumane thing for me to say, but I’m doing this reluctantly and for the greater good. By the way, I now intend, on the strength of the two quotations from Dan above, to refer to him in future as ‘the liar Dan Simon’. Can anyone tell me of a good reason why I should not do so?

By: liminal

liminal — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 06:14:27 +0000

What would General Churchill say about this? Just in case you didn't catch the website on the photo of the banner in the original post: Check out this short animation, with sound effects of machine guns even, advertizing the "Men's Night Out" where that insane pictoral account of military recruitment in a Kentucky church that I caught on Fark.com via locomono (see screenshots if you missed it).

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:08:44 +0000

Do you support torture, Dan? I have—on Crooked Timber, in fact—defended, under very limited circumstances, the use of interrogation techniques that some have defined as “torture”. According to your previous comment (although you might now be backtracking), that makes me a “little Eichmann”. We know what Ward Churchill was willing to see happen to “little Eichmanns” (according to remarks that you defended), as well as what happened to the original Eichmann. I drew the obvious conclusion. Of course, if you’re now withdrawing your remarks lumping me (and, earlier, those “on the internet comparing Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank”) together with all the “Little Eichmanns and Big Eichmanns”—i.e., the people whose targeting as non-innocents Ward Churchill justified, with your apparent approval—then I’m very glad. But the deafening silence from the Crooked Timber crowd when you openly called for anyone who defends torture in public to be treated like Osama bin Laden, speaks volumes about how seriously anyone here (or pretty much anyplace else in academia, for that matter) takes the concept of “free speech”.

By: Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 21:42:29 +0000

To Dan Simon— Do you support torture, Dan? Your question makes no sense if you don’t. Supposing you do, and many Americans are in that category these days, I’d say you are just another person who holds morally disgusting views and that’s not a capital offense. If you are actually involved in torturing someone (either directly or by writing memos proposing this as a policy), then perhaps you should be tried for crimes against humanity or whatever the appropriate charge would be. This is how we deal with criminals, Dan. This is really sort of elementary, unless you think that criminals should be dealt with by flying planes into buildings where they might work and it hasn’t occurred to you that there might be other options. You and Churchill both seem a little confused about this. Server error, it says. Blame that if this appears twice.