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The Wrongs of Wright: The campaign against Obama
SIR RONALD SANDERS
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Any allegation, repeated often enough, has a tendency to become true in the minds of many. This technique is being used wantonly by detractors of Barack Obama in the campaign for the presidency of the United States of America.
SIR RONALD SANDERS
The focus is the misreporting of a sermon, delivered seven years ago, by the pastor of the Church in Chicago that Obama attends.
The fact that this sermon was delivered seven years ago is, in itself, instructive.
Listening to the debates on US television channels, anyone would be forgiven for believing that the pastor delivered the sermon just yesterday.
The truth is that Obama's detractors went digging for dirt and they trawled through everything they could find to smear him.
Eventually, someone landed on Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermon, entitled The Day of Jerusalem's Fall delivered on September 16, 2001, five days after the atrocities of 9/11.
Thereafter, the detractors of Obama ensured that the US media were fed with alleged quotes from the sermon. I say "alleged" because one of the statements that is regularly attributed to this particular sermon was not in the sermon; it was made in 2003 in an entirely different situation.
It has to be noted that Wright delivered this sermon five days after 9/11. He was, like everyone else in the world at the time, trying to find a context for the atrocities in which terrorists flew two aircrafts into the Twin Towers in New York City and killed thousands of innocent people.
What would have spurred such a terrible act? And, why direct it at the United States? What is more: how should the people of the United States grapple with this stark reality that so much hate could be directed at their country?
These were not questions that were unique to Reverend Wright. Almost everyone - all over the world - was confronting them as well.
Wright attempted to give some comprehension of the catastrophe to his congregation and, in doing so, he quoted the remarks of Edward Peck, a white, former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan's terrorism task force, who was speaking on the US television channel, FOX News.
It was Peck, not Wright, who said that 9/11 was America 's "chickens coming home to roost". In other words what Peck said was that 9/11 was, in part, a reaction to the actions of successive US governments in many parts of the world which had built up deep resentment.
How many millions of people all over the world did not think the same thing, including millions in America itself? It was not that any right-thinking person would justify or not condemn such a terrible atrocity directed at innocent civilians, but many could not help but feel that if successive US governments had been more even-handed in the middle east and more inclined to diplomacy rather than force in many other parts of the world, 9/11 may not have occurred.
It is instructive to read the actual words of Reverend Wright. He said:
"Violence begets violence.Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that."
Now, Barack Obama's detractors are trying to nail him to the cross, not for what the Reverend Wright actually said, but for the interpretation that they have put on his sermon.
They did not stop with the September 2001 sermon. They dug up two other statements, one made two years later in 2003 and another in 2007. These two statements, posted in a US magazine are as follows:
"The government ...wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. God damn America; that's in the bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human." (2003) and "The United States of White America." (July 22, 2007).
Like the 2001 sermon, these utterances of Reverend Wright are published without context, and the full text of his statements is not revealed. Obama's detractors simply picked out the sensational as justification for condemnation.
But, whether American establishment likes it or not, black people in the US have been treated for generations as if the rights and entitlements of US citizenship belonged to whites only.
Now the detractors of Obama are using the false allegations and misinterpretations of Reverend Wright that they themselves created to try to push Obama out of the presidential race.
The spin from the Clinton camp is to frighten Democrats to turn away from Obama by saying that "if Senator Obama doesn't show a willingness to try to answer all the questions now, Senator McCain and the Republican attack machine will not waste a minute pressuring him to do so if he is the Democratic Party's choice in the fall. But by then, it may be too late".
And what are the questions they want Obama to answer? They are basically two: Why did he not condemn Wright's remarks as wrong, and why did he not leave the Church?
Obama can't say it because his answers would be used against him. But, any thinking person would know that he didn't leave the Church, nor did he condemn Wright, because Wright's wrongs are not what he said - for many millions hold the same view; his wrongs are that he dared to give expression to uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.
Senator Obama's campaign is set to become a lot worse as this murky race intensifies.
(The writer is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat)
Responses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com
SIR RONALD SANDERS
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Any allegation, repeated often enough, has a tendency to become true in the minds of many. This technique is being used wantonly by detractors of Barack Obama in the campaign for the presidency of the United States of America.
SIR RONALD SANDERS
The focus is the misreporting of a sermon, delivered seven years ago, by the pastor of the Church in Chicago that Obama attends.
The fact that this sermon was delivered seven years ago is, in itself, instructive.
Listening to the debates on US television channels, anyone would be forgiven for believing that the pastor delivered the sermon just yesterday.
The truth is that Obama's detractors went digging for dirt and they trawled through everything they could find to smear him.
Eventually, someone landed on Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermon, entitled The Day of Jerusalem's Fall delivered on September 16, 2001, five days after the atrocities of 9/11.
Thereafter, the detractors of Obama ensured that the US media were fed with alleged quotes from the sermon. I say "alleged" because one of the statements that is regularly attributed to this particular sermon was not in the sermon; it was made in 2003 in an entirely different situation.
It has to be noted that Wright delivered this sermon five days after 9/11. He was, like everyone else in the world at the time, trying to find a context for the atrocities in which terrorists flew two aircrafts into the Twin Towers in New York City and killed thousands of innocent people.
What would have spurred such a terrible act? And, why direct it at the United States? What is more: how should the people of the United States grapple with this stark reality that so much hate could be directed at their country?
These were not questions that were unique to Reverend Wright. Almost everyone - all over the world - was confronting them as well.
Wright attempted to give some comprehension of the catastrophe to his congregation and, in doing so, he quoted the remarks of Edward Peck, a white, former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan's terrorism task force, who was speaking on the US television channel, FOX News.
It was Peck, not Wright, who said that 9/11 was America 's "chickens coming home to roost". In other words what Peck said was that 9/11 was, in part, a reaction to the actions of successive US governments in many parts of the world which had built up deep resentment.
How many millions of people all over the world did not think the same thing, including millions in America itself? It was not that any right-thinking person would justify or not condemn such a terrible atrocity directed at innocent civilians, but many could not help but feel that if successive US governments had been more even-handed in the middle east and more inclined to diplomacy rather than force in many other parts of the world, 9/11 may not have occurred.
It is instructive to read the actual words of Reverend Wright. He said:
"Violence begets violence.Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that."
Now, Barack Obama's detractors are trying to nail him to the cross, not for what the Reverend Wright actually said, but for the interpretation that they have put on his sermon.
They did not stop with the September 2001 sermon. They dug up two other statements, one made two years later in 2003 and another in 2007. These two statements, posted in a US magazine are as follows:
"The government ...wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. God damn America; that's in the bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human." (2003) and "The United States of White America." (July 22, 2007).
Like the 2001 sermon, these utterances of Reverend Wright are published without context, and the full text of his statements is not revealed. Obama's detractors simply picked out the sensational as justification for condemnation.
But, whether American establishment likes it or not, black people in the US have been treated for generations as if the rights and entitlements of US citizenship belonged to whites only.
Now the detractors of Obama are using the false allegations and misinterpretations of Reverend Wright that they themselves created to try to push Obama out of the presidential race.
The spin from the Clinton camp is to frighten Democrats to turn away from Obama by saying that "if Senator Obama doesn't show a willingness to try to answer all the questions now, Senator McCain and the Republican attack machine will not waste a minute pressuring him to do so if he is the Democratic Party's choice in the fall. But by then, it may be too late".
And what are the questions they want Obama to answer? They are basically two: Why did he not condemn Wright's remarks as wrong, and why did he not leave the Church?
Obama can't say it because his answers would be used against him. But, any thinking person would know that he didn't leave the Church, nor did he condemn Wright, because Wright's wrongs are not what he said - for many millions hold the same view; his wrongs are that he dared to give expression to uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.
Senator Obama's campaign is set to become a lot worse as this murky race intensifies.
(The writer is a business executive and former Caribbean diplomat)
Responses to: ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com