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Author | Ward Churchill |
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Pages | 309 |
ISBN | 1-902593-79-0 |
OCLC | 53998572 |
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality is a 2003 book written by Ward Churchill and published by AK Press. [1] The "Roosting Chickens" of the title comes from a 1963 Malcolm X speech [2] [3] about the John F. Kennedy assassination, which the rights activist called "merely a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.'" [4]
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 claimed that the September 11 attacks against the United States were "acts of war" by the "Islamic East" in defense against the "crusades" waged by the "Christian West" (e.g., Arab–Israeli conflict and The First Gulf War) throughout the late 20th century. [5]
The original "Some People Push Back" essay was written one day after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
In Churchill's original essay, he argued that the September 11 attacks were a response to American imperialism, particularly in the Middle East:
On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well. The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable – in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival. If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough – and 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. Indisputably, the rest have suffered – are still suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and psychological trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated. [5]
Since Churchill 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 argues that some of those targeted in the attack of the World Trade Center were not technically 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. Recourse to "ignorance"—a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore"—counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in—and in many cases excelling at—it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it. [5]
The essay was followed by the book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens in 2003.
After a foreword by Chellis Glendinning, the book is divided into three parts:
Neither piece was widely publicized at the time, though the 2003 book does indicate that the Nazi references in the earlier essay were already controversial. [6] The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights gave Churchill's volume an honorable mention in December 2004. [7]
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". Churchill's "little Eichmanns" drew ferverous condemnation from media pundits, who called for his resignation and deemed him unfit to teach. The University of Colorado Board of Regents publicly apologized for Churchill's writings about the September 11 attacks. Following this media controversy, Churchill was investigated for plagiarism, alleged to have committed academic misconduct, fired, and filed a lawsuit against CU. Churchill won the wrongful dismissal claim and was awarded $1 in damages by a jury that was vacated by the judge. [8] Churchill's final appeal was denied on April 1, 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. [9]
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"Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The name comes from Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who helped to orchestrate the Holocaust, but claimed that he did so without feeling anything about his actions, merely following the orders given to him.
Ward LeRoy Churchill is an American activist and author. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 until 2007. Much of Churchill's work focuses on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government, and he expresses controversial views in a direct, often confrontational style. While Churchill has claimed Native American ancestry, genealogical research has failed to unearth such ancestry and he is not a member of a tribe.
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The concept of inversion in postcolonial theory and subaltern studies refers to a discursive strategy which opposes or resists a dominant discourse by turning around its categories and re-enacting an asymmetrical relation with the terms the other way around. The term can be used with positive, negative or neutral value-connotations.
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The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks and is the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. The main targets of the campaign are militant Islamist movements like Al-Qaeda, Taliban and their allies. Other major targets included the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which was deposed in an invasion in 2003, and various militant factions that fought during the ensuing insurgency. After its territorial expansion in 2014, the Islamic State militia has also emerged as a key adversary of the United States.
Gustavus Myers was an American journalist and historian who published a series of highly critical and influential studies on the social costs of wealth accumulation.
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The Iraqi insurgency was an insurgency that began in late 2011 after the end of the Iraq War and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, resulting in violent conflict with the central government, as well as low-level sectarian violence among Iraq's religious groups.
The Islamic State of Iraq was a Salafi jihadist militant organization that fought the forces of the U.S.-led coalition during the Iraqi insurgency. The organization aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia law in Iraq.
The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, earlier known as the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights or The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America or several other such variations, was an American nonprofit organization that existed from 1984 to 2009. It took its name from American journalist and historian Gustavus Myers and, in particular, from his 1943 work History of Bigotry in the United States. The center was most known for the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, given out each year to ten books. The award, in the words of the center, "commends works published in a given year which extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power."
The Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards were literary awards given out each year between 1985 and 2008 by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Each year ten works were so noted for their treatment of the subjects of bigotry, intolerance, and inequitable power arrangements in society.
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