The ongoing controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, intrigues me. There is, for example, the need to ask how much Wright’s preaching differs from that found in other predominantly Black churches in this country. According to some reports, it’s not at all uncommon:

Many U.S. voters have been shocked by the sentiments expressed by the pastor of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama but they should not be surprised, say faith leaders with experience of black American churches.

Anger at discrimination, real or perceived, and strong memories of racial injustice is a common thread running through black American discourse and is reflected in religious life, they said.

[snip]

frustration over race coupled with a desire to correct injustice fuels sermons in many black churches, said progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis, who is white, in an interview.

“There is a great deal of … anger in the black community and in black churches and the elephant in the room here is that most white Americans would be very uncomfortable in most black churches on Sunday morning,” said Wallis, who founded the Sojourners community and magazine.

While I haven’t had time to explore everything he’s said, I find that the comments which to many seem to be the most outrageous are taken from his post 9/11 sermon. I watched a video today which seems to put this sermon into a more sensible context than one finds it on talk radio and in the mainstream media. Have a look at this if you’d like to see a broader version of what was said, rather than simply the carefully selected soundbytes:

Not quite the same, is it?

Wright is obviously very wrong about a lot of things we’ve heard him saying, presuming that they, too, weren’t taken out of context. On this, however, I think he’s on to something:

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye…We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

To many Americans, this is secular blasphemy. And yet, the U.S. was guilty, through intentional military action, of the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents during World War II. As bad as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, there were also the firebombings in Dresden and Tokyo, which caused more immediate civilian deaths – in Tokyo the number was nearly 100,000 in one night – than either of the atomic bombs did. From the perspective of moral theology, these were not morally justifiable actions. They were several orders of magnitude more evil than September 11th was. Should Wright be demonized for observing the irony here?

We also overwhelmingly support Israel as it continues to make the lives of the Palestinian people unbearable. This is not to say that Palestinian bombings are justified, only that Israeli military power and economic strength vastly outweigh those of Palestine. There is an asymmetry there that is unappreciated or unrecognized by many Americans who might perceive things differently if they were more aware.

What happened in New York and at the Pentagon was the result of evil men believing that ends justify means and that therefore committing the mass murder of innocents was a justifiable and honorable thing. And yet the fact that they have those ends in mind at all is not something that has occurred strictly within a vacuum.

Despite protestations from GOP hacks, talk radio, and Rudy Giuliani, we have given them plenty of reasons to hate us through our foreign policy, our exportation of debauchery, and yes, our arrogance. The fact that they responded by perpetrating a horrible atrocity shows the iscrutable depth of their own depravity, and the responsibility for such actions clearly falls on those who perpetrated them. It is foolishness, however, for us to use our outrage as an excuse that frees us from our own obligation to perform a collective self-examination. The American conscience, as it were - particularly when we examine our actions in times of war - has often been found gravely wanting.

Conservatives who have found solace in supporting Ron Paul in this race know that this principle of “blowback” is highly unpopular with the American people. If one gives credence to the fact that our own actions contributed to the attack we suffered on that fateful September day, they are treated as a pariah, particularly among many of their “conservative” peers.

The idea that the our foreign policies do not have an impact on our relations with those who are affected by them - even to the point where some may be willing to attack us as they did seven years ago - is a fallacy. It is our job to understand the volatility of the peoples that we are dealing with, to listen to their complaints, and to recognize the possible consequences. It has become popular, particularly among the American Right, to believe that we were attacked for the sole reason that “they hate us because we’re free” and not because of anything we’ve done. There is partial truth to the idea that they hate us because we are not like them, that we are free from their law and their morality, but this alone is not the reason why they attack us. Reducing it to that is also a fallacy.

And as Chesterton said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

Filed under: American Empire, Common Sense, Politics