Review of Ward Churchil's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance
Published in Social Anarchism
By Stevphen Shukaitis

The historian Eric Hobsbawm, in The Age of Extremes, notes that, “The destruction of the past, or rather the social mechanisms that link one’s contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century. Most young men and women at the century’s end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in.” This sense of there being no past, no time but the eternal present of self-creation and recreation (a time well suited for the constant illusion of innovation and change embodied in the market) has attained an even greater state of hegemony within US society, where aside from a few mythological notions of historical details of civic foundations the past almost ceases to exist.

Thus in the days after September 11th, 2001 cries and queries of “why do they hate us?” rang out with an alarming intensity only matched by absurdity of official explanations for such events. In such conditions texts such as this offering from Native American activist and professor Ward Churchill can only be bound but to be extremely important, laying out with clarity and precision the true nature and extent of the history of US military aggression, criminality, and lawlessness. This text, which consists primarily of two large and very detailed timelines, methodically catalogues and documents both the history of US military actions at home and abroad from 1776 – 2003 as well as US votes within the United Nations and how such have systematically undermined international law. The result can only be described as devastating, as Churchill strips away with well documented and detailed accuracy the multitude of military campaigns and acts of aggression revealing the hypocrisy and self-delusion of propagandistic claims to the status of the US as the “most peace-loving of nations” and any other claims.

While the wide gulf separating the ideological fantasies of US history that gloss over the true nature of the historical record will likely come as little surprise to many readers who approach such from a progressive or radical political framework, the effect of having such so clearly described and laid out in chronological order may easily manage to shock and appall even those who are already quite aware of many of the events constituting US history. While the timelines themselves may not make for the smoothest of reads, as commentary and discussion is for the most part saved for essay sections between them, the sheer weight of the amassed evidence cannot help but to expose the banal clichés employed to describe the US historical record as ideological devices and outright deceptions. Flipping through the text I found myself wishing that it was available as a searchable database, perhaps downloadable onto a PDA or other device, readily accessible for whenever I find myself engaged in debate over US foreign and wishing to instantly recall particular dates and conflicts.

Far from the claimed status of being the “most peace loving nation earth,” Churchill’s documentation of US military invasions and campaigns and domestic counterinsurgency campaigns reveals that there is not a single year in the history of the country where the military has not been involved in some sort of violent conflict. From the crushing internal dissent during colonial days to now, the displacement of Native American populations to the various CIA backed methods of destabilizing and overthrowing democratically elected regimes around the world, Churchill’s writing plays the important role of bringing out events and conquests left out and erased from official narratives of history presented in the US, particularly in the schools. It serves recreate the kinds of organic social connections and relations to the past that Hobsbawm describes as no longer existing. Given the nature of the history revealed through the text one might be inclined to argue that the erasure of history, memory, and our connection to it is precisely because of the atrocious nature of the history of US power and domination.

Churchill’s enumeration of votes taken in the United Nations since the end of the World War II likewise makes clear that far from being the upholder of peace, democracy, and other values generally professed in the diplomatic realm, the US has acted in ways consistently flaunting, defying, and disregarding standards of international law. Whether in acknowledging rights to food, the safety of refugees, or economic self-determination, the US has consistently voted against any proposal that would in impinge upon its state of sovereign exception from standards of international law being applied to itself. Particularly striking examples of this include the US rejection of the treaty creating the International Criminal Court unless its own citizens are exempt from being tried within it and that actions held found to be criminally illegal during the Nuremberg trial were not held to be so when the US military engaged in them during the 1970s (such as the bombing of dams in Cambodia).

While the book succeeds spectacularly at many levels at stripping away the pretenses and images that the official US version of history it holds of itself part of me wants to ask, for whom? One of the first guidelines any writer learns is that a text should be written considering who one’s audience is, with decisions made about style, presentation, and argument made that take into account such. While Churchill’s text is well suited for deconstructing the violent and despicable history that has been swept under the rug of collective memory, the outward presentation and appearance of the argument in many ways works toward preventing that from happening.

Historically the views of radicals and progressives have been marginalized by their portrayal in the media and such outlets as scary gun toting radicals who despise the country (“America haters!”), are pawns of Soviet designs, and so forth. So to a degree the presentation and design of the book with its picture of Churchill in 70s style glasses and brandishing a submachine gun on the back cover plays right into this process of marginalization. Or, to put it this way, who is going to pick up a book whose title includes a line about US criminality and arrogance that isn’t to some degree already keen on such views? Usually I am not very sympathetic to arguments about the importance of “appealing to liberals” or similar lines of thought, and this is not what I want to suggest here, but rather that the goals and arguments pursues in the book would be better achieved through slight changes in how he presents them, not in their substance but more in the rhetorical style. And in certain ways this issue intersects without key arguments that he makes.

Denying that the issue is that great portions of the US population are not aware of the sections of US history Churchill rather takes the perspective that the population is engaged in acts of willful, deliberate ignorance. For instance, he comments that the queries as to why people abroad would resent the US, “The very question is on its face absurd, delusional, revealing of an aggregate detachment from reality so virulent as to be deemed clinically pathological.” (Page 13) Reflecting back on my own memories of high school history and through much of college I have to disagree with this view, as it fully possible to pay attention to the given sources of information while not being aware of many of the aspects of US history and domination that Churchill is drawing out through the text. It is for this reason the books such as this are all the more important because they braid together the information and history of such events and pair such with calls for radical forms of social action and organizing.

While it is quite common in forms of radical discourse to draw comparison between the current US situation and Nazi Germany, such can come off as absurd to people who are not aware of the reasons, actions and similar structural logics underlying such statements. Drawing upon the reflections of Karl Jaspers on how Germany could come to grips with the criminality of its government and the complicity of its citizens in it, Churchill likewise through this text provides a powerful weapon for detonating the concepts and pretenses used to justify US exceptionalism. Moving beyond speaking truth to those in power, who are already aware of the nature of atrocities being committed, Churchill’s writing is well suited for shaking off the collective illusions held by the US. As Chellis Glendinning notes in the introduction, “In today’s world, we are all colonized.” If such is the case, Churchill successfully demonstrates exactly why the natives are restless.

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality by Ward Churchill. 123 pp. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003. $15.95.