Ward Churchill

If civilization, as [author: Stanley Diamond] said, originates in conquest abroad and repression at home, then Churchill's work on the repression of the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement addressed the latter. This book documents the ways the imperialist record of the Unites States exemplifies the other side of that equation as well.

The title essay has become notorious thanks to Bill O'Reilly's campaign against Churchill and radical academia at large. Certainly anticipating some disagreement with his condemnation of "U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality," Churchill composed a 40-page chronology of U.S. Military actions and their explicit or implicit motives and another 164-page chronology of US violations of and contempt for international law since 1945. The gist of the main essay is that, given the violence (military and economic) that the US, since its inception, has perpetrated across the globe without interruption in defiance of international opinion, some people will eventually push back; hence, 9/11.

The formal written content weighs in at only 45 pages. The bulk of the book that remains is essentially reference material (chronology and notes). The result is at the same time, more abrasive and to the point than [author: Naomi Klein]'s equally damning [book: The Shock Doctrine]; this is the encyclopedia to Klein's novel. Churchill isn't making any new friends here but presenting historical facts so morally offensive that he shouldn't expect to.

In the short concluding section of the book, which surprised me in its frankness, Churchill presents a rousing case for the revolutionary destabilization or destruction of the US state apparatus in order that it may be brought finally under the rule of international law. In this regard, Naomi Klein does not go so far.… (mer)