Bill Moyers' Friday interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. was an enlightening hour that demonstrated both the noncontextual nature of at least one of the condemned video clips and that Rev. Wright does not understand the nature of the terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda.
A disquisition of a Wright sermon is only of interest because of the relationship of Barack Obama to his former pastor, the major role Wright played in Obama's life, and because Wright 's ideas and statements will play a role in the Republican (and section 527 group) depiction of Obama in the general election should Obama be the Democratic nominee for President this year.
The noncontextual quotation condemned by Obama in his Philadelphia speech, following on similar condemnations by others, is Wright's statement that the September 11, 2001 terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center is a case of the "chickens coming home to roost."
Critics condemned this Wright statement because the widely circulated clip suggests that the 9/11 tragedy was deserved.
In fact, the quotation comes in the middle of a Wright sermon delivered at his Chicago church shortly after 9/11 in which Wright analyzes the tragedy in relation to the rarely quoted last four lines of Psalm 137.
Psalm 137 ("By the rivers of Babylon") is an eloquent and touching depiction of the suffering felt by the Hebrews in exile in Babylonia in the sixth to fifth centuries B.C., called a "hymn of national mourning" by one commentator. The psalmist notes the refusal of the captives to play music for their captors as a "song of the Lord on alien soil" that would be an unacceptable denial of their origins and ethnicity. "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither..." the psalmist cries out.
The last four graphic lines of Psalm 137 used by Wright are:
a blessing on him who repays you [Babylonia] in kind what you have inflicted on us;
a blessing on him who seizes your babies
and dashes them against the rocks.
In the sermon, after describing the 9/11 attack as an "unspeakable act" that he witnessed from a Newark hotel room, Wright turns to the quoted portion of Psalm 137. He argues that 9/11 is an example of the revenge the Hebrews considered wreaking on innocent children to be thrown "against the rocks" and murdered.
Citing several instances of "terrorist" acts perpetrated or aided by the United States including the obliteration of native American tribes, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Palestinians and others "without blinking an eye," Wright argues that the 9/11 attack was a slaughter of innocents similar to the murders of their captors' children considered a "blessing" by the Hebrews in Psalm 137. Thus, because violence begets violence, Wright thunders to his congregation that 9/11 was a case of the "chickens coming home to roost" and receives loud cries of approval from the assembled congregants.
The problem with Wright's use of the Psalm 137 quotation to explain the motivation of the 9/11 murderers is that it is just plain wrong.
The 9/11 killers were not captives seeking to hurt their captors as the Psalm 137 Hebrews were and their behavior has nothing to do with the "in kind" paybacks the psalmist describes.
The World Trade Center criminals were acting to achieve the hegemony of Islam over those who their psychotic interpretation of the Koran made infidels ripe for destruction, part of a nation and a system that was to be destroyed because al qaeda disagrees with it. Thus, since neither the United States nor those at the World Trade Center were al qaeda's captors nor was al qaeda or Islam a captive of either, Psalm 137's mention of Hebrew captives invoking a "blessing on him who repays" their captors by killing their children, and its use in the Wright sermon was, to say the least, inept.
If Rev. Wright thinks that 9/11 is a case of the "chickens coming home to roost," his position finds no support in Psalm 137. The desire of an innocent prisoner to lash out at his jailer's progeny is far different than the desire to take over the world for Islam that animated al qaeda's murderous conduct on September 11, 2001 and that animates it today.
1) Ten years of sanctions against Iraq, resulting in the death of over a million Iraqi children;
2) The oppression of the Palestinians by Israel & the by proxy US;
3) The US military bases in Saudi Arabia [seen by many as an occupying army].
But of course, to people like Tom Baer, such compelling issues have no bearing on why the US was attacked on 9-11-01.
Baer states: "The World Trade Center criminals were acting to achieve the hegemony of Islam over those who their psychotic interpretation of the Koran made infidels ripe for destruction, part of a nation and a system that was to be destroyed because al qaeda disagrees with it."
This is rightwing Islamofacist BS of the first order, and is the moronic thinking of clueless right-wingnuts who do as they are told and ask no questions, and also the mantra of NeoConservatives, sho know better, but also know their audience and what kind of drivel they will lap up.
IMO, anyone with half a brain has disavowed this rank propaganda long ago.
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
can we get some evidence on the whole AIDS conspiracy?
we are all waiting
It is America to which Wright applies Psalm 137. You missed it completely! We are the ones killing innocents in our rage.
Welcome to the new Ayn society. The rich and powerful are "supposed" to lead. The rif-raf surfs job is to follow, labor and die as designated by the ruler. Any religeous leader/person/rganization that refutes that is an enemy of the state. To be sound-bite parsed, beat up and then ignored never to be allowed to be spoken of again, unless as fodder for the next disinformation effort. Lincoln is not a universal hero nor are many who did not follow the pure "faith". If needed the high hero is lionized beyond all reality. Ronald RayGun is never noted for "cut and run" from Beruit. The selected history and selected use of Jesus is the new "religeon" of the state.
I saw one comment that took issue with the exact meaning of the phrase "chickens coming home to roost," seeming to require that actual "blame" not ever be attributed, and that no matter what we have done, we did not "deserve" the attacks on 9/11.
I can say as most do that no one person was deserving of those attacks, nor were they in any way responsible for them...but where then does that leave us?
If we enact policies [and we have in the past, it is a FACT] that overthrow nations and result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, just what, exactly, do we--the collective United States of America--deserve for our actions?
How is it that we can harm nations in the Middle East and not DESERVE their retribution?
Why can we not just face this logical conclusion?
"The police don't care about the lives of black men" sounds a lot like "The Zionists don't care about the lives of Palestinians".
Once you de-humanize your opposition and extrapolate something specific to a universality that can't be changed by argument or reason, people start to do crazy things. And although to this point black leaders have not pushed people to commit terrorist acts against their own country, the mode of propagandizement looks eerily familiar.
If Al Sharpton really does shut down New York City, isn't there a possibility that some emergency in the city doesn't get handled quickly, leading to the unnecessary suffering or even death of innocent people?
Sean Bell is dead, and no amount of protesting or prostration is going to change that. But it won't stop those like Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton from using it to manipulate people and motivate them to follow their own agendas.
God's Judgement of White America (The Chickens Come Home to Roost)
Malcolm X, edited by Imam Benjamin Karim
December 4 , 1963
note - this speech was delivered before Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and accepted true Islam -- so his views in this speech do not reflect his own or those he held near the end of his life.
This speech is sometimes called "The Chickens Come Home To Roost," because of an answer Malcolm X gave in response to a question following the speech. The question concerned the late President John Kennedy. It was Malcolm X's answer, that the Presidents death was a case of "chickens coming home to roost" -- that the violence that Kennedy had failed to stop had come back to him, this resulted in the Elijah Muhammad silencing him. Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam a short time later.
Wright's sermon was about revenge--that it is to be expected in human affairs. So far as 9/11 specifically is at issue, it was clearly an act of revenge. The term "blowback" is an accepted euphemism, if that's what Baer wants.
Next could you sermonize on the biblical implications of a Presidential candidate threatening to "obliterate" a nation of 71 million people? It might make more interesting reading because, after all, your pathetic candidate actually said it.