Reflections On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

Reflections On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: reflections on the consequences of U. S. imperial arrogance and criminality

Ward Churchill
Edinburgh: AK Press, 2003, £11.90, p/back

After a short and densely documented essay on the slaughter which has accompanied the formation and expansion of the United States of America, and some speculation on the possibility of bringing this to an end, the author gives us a 220 page chronology (by year, month and sometimes by day) of the United States. This is divided into two sections: military actions; and, the much longer section, what the author calls ‘US Obstructions, Subversions and Violations and Refusals of International Legality Since World War II’. Most of the military and paramilitary stuff we know already; much of it has been dealt with by Bill Blum in his books. In the second section, less familiar is the diplomatic activity as the America state fended off attempts by the rest of the world to make it behave less like the violent, war-loving, imperialist monster that it has become. This section I found fairly tedious to read because it is more or less a summary work of reference, rather than an historical account. It is important to see all the occasions on which the US vetoed UN resolutions critical of Israel and South Africa, for example, but it isn’t interesting to read them.

It has been the biggest of big lies: the world’s most aggressive and violent post-war imperial power is believed, by most of its people and much of the media-political class, to be a peaceful, anti-imperialist power. Excuse me? With 700 plus overseas military bases? The trick has been to generate enemies ‘threatening’ America. But I don’t need to go there: Gore Vidal, most elegantly, and many others, have done it already and better than I could. (1)

For the most part the author sticks to what is known but occasionally cannot resist a good conspiracy theory. He tells us, for example, on p. 71:

‘1969-72 The CIA, with apparent DOD co-operation, undertakes a super secret domestic operation to “neutralize” America’s already acid-drenched “counterculture” of dissident white youth by rendering it “psychologically dysfunctional”. The means employed is a flood, not only of LSD but also amphetamine and a variety of the army’s chemical warfare substances ….’ etc.

‘Super secret’ is right: there is no evidence of this that I am aware of (and he presents none); and he doesn’t need it: the published record is damning enough.

File next to Blum, Chomsky and Herman, Peter Dale Scott and all the other chroniclers of the bestiality of American foreign policy. Am I anti-American? No. But I am anti-American foreign policy. America is a more complicated place than is acknowledged by many on the British left. The author’s photograph is on the rear cover. He has shoulder-length hair, is wearing a beret, shades, a military jacket and is carrying what appears to be a Kashalnikov assault rifle. He is a Cherokee and a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). But – and this is one of those ‘only in America’ moments – he is also professor of American Indian Studies and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder – a prof with a Kashalnikov!

Notes

1 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown believe in the fairy story Uncle Sam. They really do. This is what makes them so useful to the Americans. They didn’t have to be bought: they volunteered. They couldn’t wait to be asked to the dance.