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Saturday, January 29, 2005

The Glenn Reynolds / Instapundit fact you should never forget:

Max Sawicky over at Max Speak, is justifiably outraged at a recent post by Glenn Reynolds. The Political Animal, Kevin Drum, agrees with Max ("Amen, brother").

Max cites part of Reynold's post, where the professor discusses Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and Michael Moore, as part of a general indictment of Democrats.

But in our view, the really offensive part of Reynold's post goes unmentioned. You should know what it is.

BACKGROUND: After the Al-Qaeda attack on September 11, a University of Colorado professor wrote an essay that upset practically everybody. He was Ward Churchill, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies, a Native American activist who is still angry at the conquest of North America by Europeans, and who sees today's current events through the lens of an ongoing racial/genocidal war being waged by the West.

In Churchill's essay he made the folloingassertions :

The Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.
The hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.
Those in the World Trade Center (WTC) were "civilians of a sort," but not innocent.
The 9/11 victims were "little Eichmanns" (not clear if he's referring to WTC deaths or Pentagon or both)

So that's what he said. That view is an extremely rare one, and something that virtually nobody endorses throughout the political spectrum. But here is what Reynolds has to say about Churchill: (emp add)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various lefty readers email to say that Ward Churchill is not the authentic face of the Left.

I wish I agreed with that. But, sadly, he is its very image today.

Let us clarify Reyolds for you. Glenn Reynolds, Mr. Instapundit, claims that:

The very image of the left is someone who says the Al-Qaeda crew that attacked on 9/11 were not terrorists, that those who died in the WTC were not innocent, and victims of 9/11 were little Eichmanns.

How about that?

There are many other objectionable items in Reynold's post, but we'll stop here.

UPDATE: Okay, we won't stop. Why, at this particular time, is Reynolds making such wild charges? Remember the tribute to the 9/11 victims at the Democratic Convention last summer? If that isn't a repudiation of Ward Churchill thinking, what is?

Reynold's charge would have been more timely (if still inaccurate) in the weeks after 9/11. Why bring up this old-news and widely rejected professor from Colorado? Is Reynold's post a sign of weakness on the right vis-a-vis Iraq? Or has Instapundit gotten more wacky?

posted by Quiddity at 1/29/2005 09:16:00 AM

4 comments

And Reynolds, who believes such a thing about the Left, is, in fact, the authentic face of the Right -- not some marginalized looney.

That's how far out to the center the right has gotten.

Not to mention he spends about a third of that post mocking Churchill for his appearance: what's really pathetic about Churchill, from Reynold's POV, is how chooses to wear his hair, and the glasses he has on, and his clothing.

This is debate? This is rational discourse? This is the best the right can do?

By delagar, at 1/29/2005 10:08 AM

Is Reynold's post a sign of weakness on the right vis-a-vis Iraq? Or has Instapundit gotten more wacky?Could be both, right? They are not mutually exclusive conditions. I think the Mighty Wurlitzer has a couple of clogged pipes and a few broken pedals. The musicians have gone off the 12-tone scale. Case in point: The instantaneous screeching of "racism" whenever anyone dared to question Rice's track record. Come on, the guy she replaced is black and the person he replaced was a woman. Where's the racism? Where's the sexism? Their spin manipulations are more and more transparent and laughable every day.

Grace Nearing
Scriptoids

By Anonymous, at 1/30/2005 6:16 PM

I'm not really sure, But I heard Bill O'Reilly screeching about him the other day. Maybe they're trying to get him fired or something.

I'm sensing some kind of a concerted effort here.

By granny, at 2/04/2005 2:34 AM

I found the Ward Churchill comment kind of interesting as I remember running across a post by (allegedly, who can tell?) bin Laden who claimed that the inhabitants of the WTC were not innocent. But this author made his accusatioon much more general than Churchill did. He simply felt that as American citizens, they voted for various administrations that had, in turn, committed various anti-Arab acts.
This bin Laden didn't hate democracy per se, he simply felt that democracy had made those people culpable.
I've read some of Ward Churchill's comments and agree with a lot of what he's said, but I think "little Eichmann's" is a bit much.

By Rich Gardner, at 2/04/2005 8:24 PM