Editor:

This is in defense of the truth, which is an integral part of free speech. People’s words should not be misrepresented. To this end, I offer a more accurate look at the words of Ward Churchill, (“Doctorates and a strange love,” Feb. 9) and challenge everyone to educate themselves in this regard and not just believe whatever the media choose to portray.

The following text was written by Ward Churchill and can be found in complete version at counterpunch.org/churchill02032005.html.

The piece circulating on the Internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II.

I am not a “defender” of the Sept. 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world.

My feelings are reflected in King’s April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, ‘I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed…without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government.’ I mourn the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than three million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous people still subjected to genocidal policies.

If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths.”

Colyn Kilmer

Junior, Communication