So, how exactly were your words twisted, pastor?
How can you possibly justify calling the United States “the U.S. of K.K.K. A,” blaming the U.S. government for the spread of AIDS among African-Americans, and asserting that Americans bore some responsibility for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th (i.e., “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”)?
There’s no need to “paint” you as a “some sort of fanatic,” Rev. Wright. Your own words do that for you.
The trackback URL for this post: http://www.southernappeal.org/index.php/archives/2545/trackback
Three comments, three different responses:
1) Spreading AIDS. This is the unjustifiable one, because it’s dangerous and completely false. I can understand the paranoia among the uneducated (it’s not like the US has never spread diseases among Black people [the Tuskegee Experiments]), but it’s incumbent upon an educated person like Wright to dispel that myth, not propagate it.
2) U.S. of KKK: This is an empirical question based on how racist you think the US is. On the one hand, since I think it’s important to impress upon Whites that racism is still operative in America even when it’s not in KKK form, I think the rhetoric is tactically unsound (But bad strategy is not worthy of moral condemnation). On the other hand, it does emphasize that Blacks are still an institutionally oppressed people in the US, which is important to know. Hyperbole is a legitimate rhetorical device — all the more so in a Jeremiad.
3) “Chickens”. Here you are, in fact, taking Wright out of context. Wright isn’t saying we’re “responsible” for 9/11. The context of the quote put 9/11 up against Central America and South Africa and Hiroshima and Palestine as examples of where the US had engaged in or supported state-sponsored terrorism (I list them in order of how justified I think the claim is — in the first two, I think it’s undeniable the US was actively supporting state-sponsored terrorism). So, we’ve supported terrorism, and now terrorism is hitting us. Chickens coming home to roost isn’t a claim of causality, it’s a claim of moral symmetry. One can think that what happened on 9/11 is morally symmetrical to what happened to Central American civilians killed by American-trained terrorists without thinking that latter caused the former, or that the former deserved it because of the latter. Ideally, the trauma of 9/11 should create a moral norm in the US that refuses to ever again support terrorism. But it’s historical revisionism to say we never did so in the first place.
David: Before you claim that it is “undeniable” that the U.S. was “actively supporting state-sponsored terrorism” in either Central America or South America, I suggest you provide some evidentiary support for that proposition. As to Hiroshima, there is absolutely no basis for characterizing the bombing of that town during a war to be state-sponsored terrorism. As far as Palestine, if you are referring to the U.S.’ support of Israel and the actions Isreael has taken to defend itself and its citizens, those actions cannot by an stretch of the imagination be considered to be state-sponsored terrorism.
If you say so (I’ll do Latin America first because that is, as I said, the clearest case, then South Africa which also rather neat, but I think one can make an arguable case for Hiroshima/Nagasaki[/Dresden] as well, as even in war time those were unabashedly civilian targets and a nuclear attack is the epitome of indiscriminate bombing).
For US support of death squads in Latin America, see Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Macmillan 2006); Susanne Jones, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and US Power (Westview 1991). Bruce Campbell, Arthur David Brenne, eds., Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability (Macmillan 2000), 85-124. The impact was devastating: In El Salvador alone, over “40,000 civilian noncombatants killed — murdered by government forces and ‘death squads’ allied to them;; another 3,000 disappeared; 750,00 or so (15 percent of the population) refugees beyond its borders; 500,000 or so (another 10 percent of the population) homeless or ‘displaced’ within its borders.” Cynthia Brown, ed., With Friends Like These: The Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Latin America (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 115.
South Africa is a simple extension of the US’ support (as a “bulwark against communism”), of what, during the apartheid years, was clearly a terrorist state. America shifted here in the 1980s here thanks to the divestiture movement, and discontinued its arms trade with the state after 1964, but prior to that it was a clear (albeit sometimes reluctant) ally of the state. Cf. Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (Oxford UP 1993).
David Schraub is right. Whenever anyone kills anyone else anywhere in the world ever, it is the fault of the United States of America. And if it wasn’t for America’s tentacles of evil insinuating themselves into every human society on the planet, there would be peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
Noam Chomsky is in the details.
“Spreading AIDS. This is the unjustifiable one, because it’s dangerous and completely false”
So David, if it’s mostly false, is it then justifiable? Cause if it’s mostly false, then it’s a little true and Miracle Max could, you know….
As for racism, the last two SecStates were black. The only reason for this debate is that an unknown black political neophyte is quite likely to put paid to one of the most slick and ruthless political machines in the country.
And oh yeah, that candidate, whose African ancestry hit America in the fifties, and was therefore not victimized by slavery or Jim Crow, was legally entitled to racial preferences designed to help the historically oppressed.
So yep, the racism abounds.
“So David, if it’s mostly false, is it then justifiable?”
I believe he explicitly said it was unjustifiable.
“As for racism, the last two SecStates were black.”
And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a member of the Supreme Court. Does that mean we’ve eliminated chauvinism and anti-semitism?
“David Schraub is right. Whenever anyone kills anyone else anywhere in the world ever, it is the fault of the United States of America.”
Oh, of course! THAT was his point.
And anyone who thinks Jeremiah Wright is a fanatic ought to hop over to the The Volokh Conspiracy and read the comments under the two FLDS threads. A sampling:
“If the ‘anti-government’ types here hadn’t seen, over the years, myriad examples of the government doing utterly stupid, immoral things in situations like these, maybe they wouldn’t have such strong opinions on whether the government can really handle such a case as this one.”
“The government has totally ignored every rule and law that is suppose to protect people against wholesale fishing raids like these.”
“While still better than much of the world, the government continues to place themselves in a position of superiority rather than behaving as the servants they actually are.”
“The government has a well-documented history of making stuff up after the fact to justify what they already did.”
“Calling adolescents ‘children’ just one more example of the government’s increasingly successful effort to infantilize everybody.”
“This is what you get when you let the government get out of control.”
“…CPS is the closest thing that we have to a Gestapo in this country…”
“If the ‘child protection’ Nazis can get away with seizing these children on such a flimsy pretext, then nobody’s children are safe from them.”
“Just add, that the TX Gestapo pays competitive religious groups to ‘take care’ of children.”
And that’s just a sampling of the vehement, conspiracy-laden, anti-government sentiments expressed by (presumably) white (presumably) middle class (presumably) intelligent and (presumably) conservative Americans.
You also might want to catch the Al-Quaeda thread, too, and observe people justifying 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The other day here at SA I watched a video comparing Planned Parenthood to the KKK. Rod Parsley accuses the US government of funding black genocide.
So I’d like to know why Jeremiah Wright is considered a fanatic, when conservatives and libertarians make accusations that are just as extreme, just as paranoid and just as harmful and divisive, if not more so. Because they’re “right” and he’s “wrong”?
Yes, I must admit I’m confused by what would happen if the AIDS thing was “mostly false”. What could that mean? That by and large, AIDS spreads as a normal STD, but there have been a few cases where government scientists did, in fact, inject Black people with the virus? (And in that case, Wright’s words would still be wholly wrong if they were in fact partially true — and partially true about indicting the US in a horrible crime against humanity)? It’s kind of a bizarre hypothetical in the first place, but all the more so that Wright is supposed to be the bad guy in this nightmare because he’d be making us out to be, like, injecting Black folks with AIDS all the time when in reality we only do it occasionally, man.
As for Latin America, I think when the US federal government specifically trains folks to go out and kill civilians, and then they go out and kill civilians, yes, the causality train fits reasonably nicely there. US complicity in Latin American death squads is not really contested by historians so much as it’s one of those things we don’t like to think about because it makes us feel sad about ourselves (which I guess makes it immune to the relativism-targeting bayonet). I just don’t understand why all of the sudden SAers view the USFG as a divine kingdom all of the sudden. Didn’t I just read like nine posts extolling the conservative view that mistrusts government and its power to oppress?
And finally, as to the wowie-zowie two straight Black secretaries of state (snapping the streak of Whites at a meager 64), I was oddly reminded of Dr. Zoidberg, marveling at getting two records. Finally, he’s becoming a crafty consumer….
Grover-
But Wright is the wrong kind of fanatic. Don’t you see that? 
Oh, and Planned Parenthood really is evil. All you have to do is browse through the archives here at SA for proof of that.
David: Sorry for the delay in responding but work and family required more immediate attention. I have not read the books you listed so I can’t comment on them. However, I would note several things. First, what I am about to write should in no be construed as being supportive in any way of either death squads or apartheid. Second, the fact that it is in a book doesn’t make it the truth. Third, support of a government who is an ally in a particular conflict does not constitute an endorsement of every activity in which that government may engage. All of that being “said”, I do not think you can morally equate the U.S. seeking to stop the spread of communism and thereby preserve liberty in the U.S. and securing liberty for millions of others and the acts of 9/11 which is what you and Rev. Wright are seeking to do. With respect to Hiroshima, there were military targets in the city and there was a declared state of war. Moreover, the bombing was done in an effort to limit future casualities on both sides and, again, you cannot morally equate the two events.
Grover and David: Davis said “This is the unjustifiable one, because it’s dangerous and completely false.”
I’m a smart ass and found the modifier “completely” amusing as just false would have been sufficient. That you folks don’t get a Princess Bride reference says more about you than any of your opinions. ‘Specially for shame on David since he makes a Futurama reference, so it’s not as if he has a stick which needs surgical removal from any orifice. What is the world coming to?
Oops, meant to say “David said.”
Un-hyphen:The Futurama reference was in response to the PB one (which is one of my favorite movies). But as much as I love Miracle Max, I didn’t get the substantive point you were trying to make.
Petigru: While I’ll freely concede that a book (or three) can be wrong, right now you’ve given no reason to doubt what I understand to be the scholarly consensus of US support for the death squads aside from that it’d be a depressing thought, which stops being a valid critique after 3rd grade. You have no reason to believe that the historians are wrong and the US did not knowingly and directly aid the death squads. You just hope it to be so, and that’s not good enough.
But what’s really depressing here is that you’re engaging in flagrant relativism here — of a very pernicious form. I’m no fan of autocracy of any flavor — fascist, communist, socialist, nationalist, theocratic, what have you — and thus oppose dictatorships of all forms (even when they’re “anti-communist” ones). Now, aside from the ridiculous hyperbole that a socialist government in Nicaragua could threaten the liberty of the US, as often as not during the cold war the US pro-actively opposed democracy (e.g., Chile, Nicaragua). In many of these conflicts, nobody seriously denies the US provided material support for organizations we knew participated in terrorism — often in accord with the counter-insurgency techniques we taught them. So color me confused here: where is the justification in supporting terrorists to overthrow democracy and install dictatorships? Can we not bayonet this, at least?
Apparently not, and what we’re left with is the sub-text of “if we did it, we were fighting evildoers, dammit” — a relativist creed of the worst kind, and precisely the logic of al-Qaeda. They also consider themselves “at war” with evil. To stress — I have no problem fighting evil, be it Nazis or Klansman in the South or dictatorial communism. But “fighting evil” — even if properly defined (as we do, and al-Qaeda doesn’t) — can’t become a justification for engaging in it. Torture in the service of liberty, in addition to being a sickening paradox, is still torture. As is terrorism, as is indiscriminate bombing, as are death squads. We have to accept those basic tenets of ethics. We just have to.
I have no doubt you do not think of yourself as someone who “supports” death squads, or terrorism, or mass atrocity. But, as my trackbacked post points out, by engaging in denial you lay the groundwork for such activities to continue indefinitely worldwide — both by sending the message to current perpetrators that there will be no repercussions for their actions, and by hindering the development of internal norms and barriers (legal, institutional, psychic) to prevent us from repeating our prior savagery.
Insofar as Americans deny their nation’s complicity in acts of terroristic violence, we remove the activities from the realm of “problems” we have to be wary of. In order to enact barriers (legal, institutional, psychic, what have you) against the perpetuation of mass atrocity, first we have to recognize in ourselves the potential for engaging in these acts. But denial reifies the opposite — it allows us to maintain the fiction that such activities are not within the realm of possibility for the United States, and hence blocks the creation and propagation of norms that might guard against it.
It’s hard to admit that the nation we love has and is capable of doing such things. But we are, and did, and when you bow to the denial instinct, you make it that much more likely it will happen again and again and again — providing the lifeblood terrorism needs to continue its ghastly assault on human dignity.
David, the PB reference was smart ass, not substantive. I was just amused by you saying that the problem was that his completely false, as if they would be okay if only mostly false. I’m a smartass.
My substantive point is that I’m sick of people gnashing their teeth about how racist America is when we have blacks in the highest level of business, political and military leadership.
But any man who counts The Princess Bride amongst their favorites cannot be all bad
There’s a saying in the feminist community that I think aptly applies to racism as well: “The problem now isn’t to get a [Black] Albert Einstein hired as an assistant professor at a third-tier school. The problem now is to insure that a [Black] schmoe gets treated the same as a [White] schmoe” (replacing female and male, respectively).
It’s fantastic that exceptional Black men and women can find a place at (some of) the highest levels in America. But most people aren’t exceptional, and for most people, all (and I mean all) of the available empirical evidence points to the reality that Blacks are still materially disadvantaged vis-a-vis Whites in virtually every field, on account of race.
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That Which We Deny... Feddie at Southern Appeal wrote a small post regarding some of the more controversial words said by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright claimed his words were being "twisted". Feddie asks how one can twist claiming that the US government is spreading AIDS (...