Courtesy of a speech he gave on September 12th, 2001, in the wake of 9/11, University of Colorado Professor Dr. Ward Churchill has become the latest ideological punching bag for the Use-America Right.

Subsequent events have caused the ruckus to unfortunately spill over into a larger discussion about free speech, tenure and academic freedom. I say "unfortunately" because the relative worth of these concepts are overshadowing the ideas in the speech itself: a document that no one seems to have really read, given the paucity of the debates over its actual contents.

Having forced myself to read "Some People Push Back "- On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, I feel I can safely conclude that Dr. Churchill is wrong, and an asshole. He may be man of intelligence and a special conscience, but the fecal taint of bad judgment and misplaced priorities have colored his few worthwhile comments with a nasty, brown stain that no amount of humanitarian sophistry will wash out.

The speech basically posits that America deserved to have 9/11 occur. It goes on at some length - and with increasing snark, and decreasing coherence - concerning the Bush Sr./Clinton "genocide" in Iraq: the questionable tactics both administrations used in order to try and squeeze Saddam Hussein into complying with sanctions.

He is quite right to be critical of these things, just as he is quite right to single out Madeline "Jaba the Hutt (sic)" Albright for his special brand of abuse in that matter. Secretary Albright publicly acknowledged the humanitarian damage we were causing, but decided that she really didn't care, saying that it was "worth the price."

(I also remember her claiming, when under fire from protesters, that America cared more about the Iraqi people than Saddam Hussein did. Ho ho ho.)

However, those few worthwhile points are all drowned out by Dr. Churchill's more irresponsible stance: that we deserved 9/11 because of them. This puts him right of the forefront of the mostly-fictional "Blame America Left" that the Use-America Right likes to go on about, and it's a pretty sad viewpoint to see.

Of course, you'd have to read the whole of the speech to get that point. Most people have chosen to focus on his comments concerning the victims in the World Trade Center, whom he likens to "little Eichmanns."

Many of his supporters say that the "bad parts" of his speech have been taken out of context. In order to provide some context, here is the paragraph in question:

As to 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.

In short: about 2000+ people from all walks of life, whose only real "crime" was not actively fighting the death - by sanctions and bombings - of children in Iraq, and furthering it by their participation in the furthering of America's economy, were attacked and killed in a "befitting" manner by the architects of 9/11.

Like I said - the man is an asshole.

He's also wrong to equate military force and international sanctions against a rogue nation - Saddam Hussein's Iraq - with a terrorist act carried out against civilians. At no time were our actions in pre-invasion Iraq aimed specifically at civilians: we were trying to squeeze Saddam Hussein into complying. That the Iraqi people suffered as a result was partly due to stupidity on our end, and partly owing to Saddam's shuffling what little money he had around to meet his own desires, rather than the needs of his own people.

If the 9/11 terrorists just dropped planes on the Pentagon and the Capitol, Churchill's arguments might have carried some weight. That clearly was not the case: they went after the World Trade Center as a primary target, not as a "just in case" if they couldn't get to where they were really going. They intended to bring those buildings down, killing as many people inside of them as possible, and while Dr. Churchill says that he "mourns" their passing, it's hard to take that claim seriously when he all but cheers their murderers on from the sidelines in Boulder, Colorado.

Dr. Churchill has added an addendum of sorts to the speech, but it exists only to point out a few factual mistakes made in the heat of the moment, and expand the list of shame for which we "deserved" 9/11 out quite a ways. He's also tried to say, elsewhere, that the kids, technical workers, janitors and the like who were also in the building weren't the "little Eichmanns" he was talking about. I'm sure they'll be glad to hear he spared them a little consideration, some three years later.

Now, Mr. Churchill was hardly the only person to blow their top immediately following 9/11, go on a bender and say something they really shouldn't have. Anne Coulter stands out as a prime example of this, but then we'd expect that from her.

And he's hardly the only person who still won't acknowledge that maybe - just maybe - he really should step back from those ill-formed comments, either. Anne Coulter scores pretty big here, too, and I would expect no less.

But if he makes any "apology," it's just to say that this was stream-of-consciousness, and therefore less than polished. The content isn't problematic to him, rather it's the conversational tone that was in error. It's sort of like apologizing for shooting someone in the liver instead of the head.

This brand of sadomasochistic snark seems par for the course for Dr. Churchill. He exists, and thrives, in that narrow-minded corner of human thought that insists on bringing up the questionable actions of the past at every opportunity, just to let us know what evil, disgusting people we are, and how we've got it coming. This is no different from when Rev. Falwell claimed that 9/11 was the fault of people on their way to Hell, except that now it's coming from the hard Left instead of the hard Right.

It's shocking to see someone who is so mired in the crimes and mistakes of American history that he would be willing to say those errors in judgment justify a senseless act like 9/11. And its disgusting that the issue of what he said - and how monumentally fucked-up it is - has been transformed into a debate on academic freedom.

His right to say these things - professionally or privately - should not be the question. His thought processes, and possible mental state, should be what's examined, instead.