Letters to the Editor
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Gary Kamiya's Brilliant Article on Wright
How wierd is this! I had just finished writing a simple piece that I wanted to send to the Pennsylvania local papers, to see if they would publish it in Letters to the Editor, when I read Gary Kamiya's excellent article. His is so much better, but do you think I should still try and spread the word? (Article below):
"Senator Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia early in March, to address the controversey surrounding his association with Reverend Wright. The reason why I bring up that speech again, is to focus on Reverend Wright's original sermon and to show another point of view. The news channels have replayed over and over the same clip from Reverend Wright's sermon, in which he seemed really angry at America. Some say it sounds like he hates America, and so they worry about Obama, because of his ties to the Illinois church. But I took the time to listen to the entire speech, because I know that when the media focuses on one or two sentences out of any context for their viewers to judge fairly, something is always wrong.
Reverend Wright's sermon in its entirety is a whole different kettle of fish from that snippet of fury that most of the public saw. He gave the sermon in the wake of 9/11, when the country was still reeling from the unexpected attacks on our cherished symbols of finance, government and defense. Al Qaeda hit us where it hurt. And we, as Americans, wanted to react, but we waited on our government to react for us, or to tell us how to react so as to inflict the most retribution.
Reverend Wright's message in his sermon was a warning about taking the un-Christian path of "payback." Many people who have viewed the entire speech said that it was "electric." The Reverend begins softly, and builds from there, using a quote from a white, Reagan-era Ambassador, Middle-East expert and Arab speaker, that "our chickens are coming home to roost." The clip that the media shows is the crescendo of Reverend Wright's sermon, after he has laid the context for his argument that as a country, we have committed atrocities against other nations, and even within our own nation, such as our treatment of the Native Americans when we conquered the North American continent.
He said that it is ok to fight against another army (like we were supposed to be doing in Afghanistan, before Cheney and Bush insisted that we focus on Iraq for reasons they have never to this day explained truthfully), but that it was not ok to kill and main innocent civilians, "the babies" quoted in the psalm he was using as his reference. At this point in time, we have no proof of how many innocent Iraqis have died in our five-year war; some estimate the number at upwards of two and half million.
Using the Reverend's anger against US policy, we have a chance to think about patriotism. When you really love something, like your children or your husband or your wife, don't you fight? Why do you fight? Do you fight with them because you hate them, or do you fight with them because you are in a relationship with them and struggling to better that relationship? When I heard Reverend Wright's sermon, I heard a man who is deeply engaged in fighting with the powers that be, because he cares.
At the time he gave this sermon, the administration handed the American public IRAQ on a silver platter. They didn't really even need to make much of a case why we needed to go to war: Americans were eager to go hurt somebody, as "payback" for the atrocities that had been inflicted on us. But Reverend Wright, and precious few others, held to the Christian doctrine that this was wrong, to take out our understandable anger out on innocents.
And five years later, we find ourselves mired in an intractable mess in Iraq, a mess that we have to take responsibility for. We allowed the administration to dangle that piece of raw meat in front of us, and we bit at it. Without listening to cautioning voices like Reverend Wright's (who may in some of his remarks offend just about everybody), and to his call to self-examination and questioning the government when they do the wrong thing, we have only ourselves to blame.
Patriotism is love of country. Any love that is real, and not just a flag-waving parody of that emotion, must focus on the truth and care enough to fight for what is right, even if it is deeply unpopular and even offensive. The press let us down terribly during the two years after 9/11: they foresook their duty to investigate and feed us the truth. But we let our country down, too, by not questioning deeply our own instincts for blood-letting, and seeking a better way. In this case, I believe a better way would have been to keep focused on Bin Laden in Afghanistan, the army which attacked us.
Now that we have come to mistrust anyone with the middle name "Hussein," we know we have messed up. That small terrorist group that tried to kill us does not represent the peace-loving Muslims who live in our country and around the world. We have been stupid, and not acted like the smart nation that we really are and must really be again, for our own sake and for the sake of the rest of the world.
-- a nobody in Texas