Ward Churchill and Hans-Hermann Hoppe might not enjoy coffee together very much. I can clearly see the meeting ending in blows. But they do have some things in common, sure: both are radical critics of the State and the social status quo; both are tenured professors at state Universities in the West; and both have recently found themselves in administrative hot water for making controversial public statements.

Churchill’s case, so far, has been more widely reported. Thanks to the heroic efforts of a student journalist using Google, the Know-Nothing blowhard brigade finally discovered that Ward Churchill wrote an essay called Some People Push Back—which has been distributed on the Internet since 2001, and was expanded into a book-length treatment in 2003—in which he described the September 11 attacks as chickens coming home to roost, pointed out that the plane flown into the Pentagon was striking a military target, and that 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. You’re hearing about all this now because Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was scheduled to speak on a panel at Hamilton College in New York on The Limits of Dissent (because God is an ironist, I guess), and after a journalist at the student newspaper dug up Churchill’s essay and wrote a story on it, the Right-wing commentariat saw something they’ve been salivating over for a long time: a perfect opportunity to sink their teeth, hard, into the (allegedly Left-dominated) world of academia. So they deployed a predictable combination of media hue-and-cry and outright threats of violence, and managed to mau-mau Hamilton into cancelling the panel. Now, in hopes of a second victory for silence, they are pushing for University of Colorado at Boulder to follow it up by firing Churchill from his (tenured) professorship. The University’s Chancellor has so far agreed to bring a thorough examination of Churchill’s opinions before the Holy Inquisition:

And Colorado’s DiStefano, after an angry grilling from the university’s Board of Regents — an elected body dominated by conservatives — reversed himself and announced a 30-day investigation of all of Churchill’s lectures and publications. This is the first step, the chancellor said, in the legal process required to fire a tenured professor.

Meanwhile, there have been Web site calls for the resignation of Stewart for allowing Churchill to be invited in the first place.

—Washington Post 2005-02-05

Just a few days later, in Las Vegas, because—again—God is an ironist, anarcho-capitalist economics Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe found himself brought before a disciplinary hearing by the administration at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Hoppe had a formal complaint filed against him by a student for his comments in a lecture on the economic concept of time preference, in which he decided to illustrate the concept by examples, and claimed that homosexuals, as a group, tend to have higher time preferences than heterosexuals—that is to say, that homos tend to prefer immediate gratification over deferred rewards more strongly than straights. He went on to insinuate that the emphasis on short-run effects over long-run equilibria in J.M. Keynes’s economic theories might be explained by Lord Keynes’s fondness for gay liasons. In response to the student’s complaint, UNLV is demanding Hoppe accept a letter of reprimand and a dock in pay in response to a formal complaint filed by a student in one of his economics classes; Hoppe is striking back with a letter-writing campaign and legal assistance from the ACLU.

The anarcho-capitalists who are coming out for Hoppe and the lefty anarchists who are coming out for Churchill might not want very much to do with each other. But both camps are right to point out that both of these cases represent dangerous threats to academic freedom. (Note: threats to academic freedom, not freedom of speech. The two are importantly different concepts, although both are valuable.) Unfortunately, both camps have also developed a maddening tendency to smother the point about academic freedom (or open debate more broadly) in a bunch of rally-‘round-the-black-flag nonsense.

Hoppe and Churchill should not be punished by academic Inquisitors for the contents of their arguments. Academic freedom is absolutely vital to the functioning of a University (as a place of education rather than an indoctrination camp), and it’s absolutely vital to maintain a climate of vigorous, open debate in our culture. But it’s important to note that the reasons for protecting academic freedom apply to bad arguments as well as to good ones: defending Hoppe’s and Churchill’s freedom to make arguments without fear of professional reprisals doesn’t require defending the arguments they make. And that’s a good thing, because Ward Churchill is a dick, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a homophobic bigot. Their arguments shouldn’t be defended, because those arguments are indefensible.

It ought to be transparent why Hoppe’s claims are offensive—and I’m frankly tired of seeing libertarians play innocent on the matter. Hoppe’s latest comments are only the latest in a long record, and I’m frankly baffled that Ilana Mercer or anyone else would take seriously the notion that describing the comments as only a generalization about how homos usually prefer immediate gratification more strongly than breeders is supposed to make it less offensive. Does anyone think that Hoppe’s left-field ad hominem argument—insinuations that poofery might explain errors in Lord Keynes’s economic thought that Hoppe finds particularly grave—is really a vital teaching tool? Or that it doesn’t make his other comments on homosexuality and gratification seem just a little, well, bigoted?

Churchill’s essay, for its part, is a farrago of confusions, logical fallacies, and flat-out lies. Most of the nits aren’t worth picking here; what is worth pointing out is that the central theme of the essay depends entirely on the claim that when America—that is, the American government—goes on a rampage around the world, we are acting like bullies, and so we have no grounds for complaint when we are ruthlessly slaughtered by people [who] push back. The problem here is that the people picked out by the we changes with every use: the people who did the rampaging and bullying are the government and its agents; the people who are complaining are, I guess, ordinary Americans; the people who were ruthlessly slaughtered were a couple of thousand workers, the overwhelming majority of them neither involved with the military nor holding any foreign policy position in the U.S. government, who happened to commit the terrible crime of going to work one Tuesday. But the people are not the government, and they are not owned by the government. They are mostly—we’re anarchists here, remember?—the victims of the government. We didn’t attack Iraq; we rarely if ever have meaningful control over the war-policy machine that has wrought so much misery in the Muslim world. The crimes of the United States government do not license crimes against civilians who happen to be in the United States; any more than the crimes of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein license crimes against civilians who happen to be in Afghanistan, Iraq, or whatever other part of the Muslim world the Leviathan is planning to stomp through next.

Churchill’s critics have repeatedly been accused of misunderstanding his arguments and taking his words out of context. Now, I have read the whole essay through several times, but you never know. So perhaps one of Churchill’s defenders could explain to me exactly what the proper, contextual understanding of this is:

In sum one can discern a certain optimism — it might even be call humanitarianism — imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over the very limited actions conducted on September 11.

Their logic seems to have devolved upon the notion that the American people have condoned what has been/is being done in their name — indeed, are to a significant extent actively complicit in it — mainly because they have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

Or, while we’re at it, this:

And when they do, when they launch these airstrikes abroad — or may a little later; it will be at a time conforming to the “terrorists”’ own schedule, and at a place of their choosing — the next more intensive dose of medicine administered here at home.

Of what will it consist this time? Anthrax? Mustard gas? Sarin? A tactical nuclear device?

That, too, is their choice to make.

During the HUAC era, many people in the U.S. were drummed out and blacklisted from teaching because they were genuinely associated with Stalinist parties in the United States. That was wrong; but you shouldn’t have to act like Stalinists were anything other than dupes or bloody-minded opportunists to make the case that the blacklisting and the anti-Communist witch hunts were wrong. The case for their academic freedom shouldn’t have been contingent on their having the right beliefs. And the same is true for both Churchill and Hoppe: the fact that they are wrong does not mean that they should be fired.

I’ll be writing a letter on behalf of both of them; defending both Churchill and Hoppe from the administrative goon squad is important. But we shouldn’t let a siege mentality dull critical thought. The reason Churchill and Hoppe are in hot water is that they made controversial statements which are rationally indefensible and deeply offensive. The problem is the administrative response to the controversy, not the controversy itself; the way to respond to terrible arguments, among rational adults, is with other arguments, not with politically-driven intimidation.

Let’s begin.

In the wake of being shown, once again, definitively, by his own people, that his only legal justification for war against Iraq turned out to be a bunch of hooey, George W. Bush responded today by showing that he has difficulty with understanding modalities:

Bush shot back a few hours later at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. Bush quoted Kerry, who wondered aloud in a speech two years ago whether Saddam Hussein might invade allies in the region or let the weapons of mass destruction he was suspected of possessing slide off to one group or another in a region where weapons are the currency or the trade.

Now today, my opponent tries to say I made up reasons to go to war, Bush told cheering supporters at an outdoor rally. Just who’s the one trying to mislead the American people?

You are, dummy.

John Kerry’s faults are many—and that’s especially true on assault on Iraq. But speculating about a dangerous possibility is different from asserting that it is actually so. Thus, Kerry favored inspections to determine whether or not this possibility was the case—backed by the threat of military force. That was a stupid-ass position, but not nearly as stupid-ass a position as the one held by Mr. Bush—who proclaimed as fact, in front of God and everybody, that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed biological and chemical weapons, was in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and posed a grave and gathering threat to the people of the United States, and so decided to force an end to inspections for no reason whatsoever (other than the time-table of his war planners).

Kerry damn well should have known better from the start. So much the worse for him, but in light of new evidence he’s admitted that he made a mistake about Iraq. Bush, on the other hand, intends to show us how resolute a Commander-in-Chief he is by insisting that it just doesn’t matter whether or not he told a bunch of lies, and that America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison.

Safer from what?

Just in case you were wondering, it’s official. George W. Bush looked us in the eye and he told us a bunch of damned lies. Colin Powell stood up in front of the United Nations and told a bunch of damned lies. Dick Cheney has told lie after lie in front of everyone.

Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, told Congress today that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stocks of chemical and biological weapons and agents in 1991 and 1992 and that his nuclear weapons program had decayed to almost nothing by 2003.

Duelfer, a former U.N. inspector and the personal representative of the CIA director, said the former Iraqi dictator had intentions to restart his program, but after weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Hussein instead focused his attention on ending the sanctions imposed by Western governments following his incursion into Kuwait and the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

—Washington Post 2004/10/06: Iraqi Arms Threat Was Waning, Inspector Says

Thanks to the lie, more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been murdered, and more than 1,000 American soldiers have been sent to their deaths in order to conquer a foreign country that posed no threat whatsoever to people in the United States. Messrs. Bush and Cheney have responded by saying, Well, it’s the thought that counts:

The White House has responded that the Iraqi leader had an intent to restart his programs, some of which he could do quickly, and that he was working on developing prohibited missiles that, if armed with chemical or biological agents, would threaten the region.

—Washington Post 2004/10/06: Iraqi Arms Threat Was Waning, Inspector Says

So Saddam Hussein didn’t pose a threat, but hey, he thought that maybe some day he might want to start working towards pose a threat… to somebody or another in the region.

Mr. Bush also likes to point out that the intelligence he had before the war looked like a good reason for invading at the time. Now, that’s a damned lie, but set that aside for the moment. Suppose you did make such a monstrous mistake and killed so many people over something that turned out not to be true, after all? Would you have a good laugh about it at press events? Would you keep on stumping for re-election on your choice to invade a country over claims that turned out to be completely false?

What kind of man can look at the more than 11,000 deaths, with more casualties coming in every goddamned day, find out that the reasons he gave to justify the war were completely specious, and then just say Oops, my bad?

Here are the facts as we know them.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, and several other senior government officials in the U.S. and U.K. told us that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. They told us that they were actively trying to find nuclear weapons. They told us that they had connections with the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and that therefore Iraq posed an imminent threat to the security of the United States. Therefore pre-emptive war was necessary, and nothing short of regime change would do.

They lied. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told them that their evidence for claiming that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear weapons was a forgery, they kept citing that completely spurious, forged evidence in public statements. When the U.S. intelligence apparatus was not giving the answers that they needed to justify their policy, they didn’t change the policy; they set up a new intelligence office to give them the answers they wanted [The Guardian]. Intelligence was cherry-picked and sexed-up and those who offered qualified or dissenting views were marginalized and went completely unmentioned in public statements [The Observer]. They had a goal, they looked for evidence to support that goal, and when they did not find good evidence they repeated evidence that they were informed repeatedly ahead of time was questionable or completely spurious evidence. And it turns out that what they claimed on nearly every point was false.

Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Iraq had no connections with al-Qaeda.

Iraq was not any threat to the United States whatsoever.

Or, to put it another way: they are a bunch of big fat fucking liars and as a result some 600 British and American troops, and somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians are dead.

The administration’s line now is that in spite of all of this, it was really no-one’s fault that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom went off to war on a lie. We got it all wrong, the story goes, but from the evidence that we had in front of us, it looked pretty reasonable to us at the time. To which the obvious response is: What you mean we, paleface? As Scott Ritter points out, IHT: Not everyone got it wrong on Iraq’s weapons [IHT].

In case you have forgotten, there were lots of people—gosh, maybe even a whole movement of people—who said that Iraq posed no imminent threat.

We showed that the administration’s case for war was based on shaky evidence, leaky-bucket arguments, politicized manipulation of data, and constantly shifting rationalizations.

We argued that there was no good reason at all to believe that there were links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

We also said, by the way, that the assault on Iraq would kill thousands of civilians and that it would result in a nasty, rudderless, destructive, costly, and hopeless occupation.

I am all for careful examination of the data on the table. But when the data on the table is this clear there are certain sorts of politically expedient mincing—much loved by blowhard teevee experts and newspaper columnists—that common decency demands we put to one side.

We didn’t get it wrong, Messrs. Bush and Blair and Cheney and Rumsfeld. You did. The facts are: the anti-war movment was right, and you were wrong. We told the truth, and you lied. But because you had the guns and the tanks and the bombs to do it, you unleashed this dirty war anyway. There’s no way to fudge that or qualify that or get around that, and the blood of the dead and maimed is on your hands. There is no we about it. There’s some moral clarity for you; stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

For further reading:

• GT 1/21/2004: Mis-State of the Union
• GT 12/15/2003: Let the Bloviating Begin
• GT 12/14/2003: Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
• GT 12/03/2003: Bush The Dirty Lying Sneak
• GT 11/11/2003: Winning The Peace
• GT 5/29/2003: Rumsfeld: What An Awful Outcome
• GT 2/17/2003: A Thought for President’s Day
• GT 2/2/2003: War Hawks Fail To Make The Case
• GT 10/7/2002: Just Say No To War on Iraq
• GT 10/2/2002: Time To Fight For Peace
• GT 9/24/2002: Al Gore the Peacenik?
• GT 9/21/2002: Unelected Government of Rogue Nation Threatens World Security, Part II
• GT 9/18/2002: Think Locally, Act Globally
• GT 9/9/2002: Right-wing Moral Clarity

Editors, The Plainsman:

In a recent letter to the editor of The Plainsman, Jonathan Melville took a rather odd tack in his support for war against Iraq:

As for the argument that Iraq doesn’t pose a threat to us, this statement is completely irrelevant with respect to whether we wage war.

Mr. Melville may not believe that it is relevant whether the United States is unleashing its deadly military might in an act of self-defense or in an act of unprovoked conquest. This is, however, an odd position to take, and requires some explanation. Unfortunately, nowhere in his letter does Mr. Melville support his claim that the United States can be justified in waging wars based on aggression rather than self-defense. Nor does he provide any principle which he thinks is relevant to whether we wage war.

I would like to propose the following test for whether or not the United States is justified in going to war with Iraq. A war is justified if all of the following conditions are met:

1. The Iraqi government possesses, or is likely soon to possess, significant weapons of mass destruction.
2. There is a specific threat that the Iraqi government will use such weapons against citizens of the United States.
3. There is good reason to believe that a war will substantially remove this threat.
4. There is good reason to believe that the destruction caused by the war will not be worse than the threat left without a war.
5. There are no options for removing the threat through less destructive means than war.

Now, neither Jonathan Melville nor myself is a U.N. weapons inspector. Neither of us has any particular access to whether (1) is true or false. As it happens, Hans Blix, who is in charge of chemical and biological weapons inspections, and Mohamed El-Baradei, who is in charge of nuclear weapons inspections explicitly deny that they have discovered anything which should prompt a war against Iraq. Since Mr. Melville claims to know that Iraq does in fact possess banned chemical and biological weapons, and also claims to know that they are about to have nuclear weapons, perhaps he has access to secret intelligence that the U.N. weapons inspectors do not. But he can hardly expect us to take his assertions on blind faith.

But even if (1) turns out to be true, neither the Bush administration, nor Jonathan Melville, has bothered to present any evidence whatsoever for (2)-(4). There is no evidence at all that Saddam Hussein has any more plans to attack the United States now than he did for the past twelve years. Has something changed in that time to transform a broken, beaten, third world country into an imminent threat to the world’s last unchallenged superpower? If something has changed, then the War Party should point it out. But, as far as I can tell, no-one has shown that anything has changed except the belligerence of the ruling party in Washington, DC.

How about (5)? Are there any options other than war? Certainly there are. For example, the United States can step back and let the inspections process continue to work—as Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei have indicated they would be willing and able to do.

Mr. Melville and his fellow epistolator Charlie Vaughan do not present any evidence for believing that (2)-(5) are true. Instead, they both try to use an analogy with the struggle against fascism as a historical backdrop for the Bush administration’s plans for war—by accusing peace supporters of favoring appeasement of Saddam Hussein, as Neville Chamberlain favored appeasement of Hitler.

The attempted comparison is a grotesque abuse of history. Saddam Hussein is certainly a ruthless dictator with a lot of blood on his hands. However, comparing him to Hitler simply blanks out one minor detail: while Hitler stood atop a massive military machine that conquered nearly all of Europe in a few short years, Hussein is the tinhorn dictator of a devastated third world country, completely surrounded by hostile and militarily superior forces. There is no appeasement of Hussein to be done, because he poses a threat to no other country. What peace supporters ask is that we do not go out of our way to unleash the destruction of war on the Iraqi people when we can deal with Saddam Hussein through peaceful means.

Mr. Vaughan also angrily accuses Dr. El Moghazy of comments that are a slap in the face of those currently serving in our military. But El Moghazy never criticized women and men in the military—rather, his criticism was directed against the Administration that is dead-set on putting those brave men and women in harm’s way. It seems to me that it is no disrespect to our troops to try to keep them from being sent off to die in another dumb foreign war. If I were in the military, I’d rather have people support our troops by keeping me alive, rather than by giving me a medal after I’m dead.