Necessarily and none too soon, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright‘s inflammatory statements have been repudiated by Sen. Barack Obama. But I can’t help but shake my head about the most assaultive sermon Wright ever gave — the one that’s gotten loads of airplay today — about how U.S. foreign policy essentially invited the 9.11 attacks. Because what he said was pretty close to the truth.
If you ask me the most alarming thing about this six-and-a-half year old videotape is Wright’s delivery. He says that God waved the attacks on, and seems to be almost relishing the fact that this country suffered what he considered an unsurprising retaliation for various foreign-policy provocations over the last few decades.
But tone down the emotion and the rhetoric and the words aren’t that different than those written by Gore Vidal (“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated“), Noam Chomsky (“9-11“) and Chalmers Johnson (“Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire“). These three guys and many others have said the same thing, which is that our government has been behind aggressive rogue policies directed against many nationalistic movements over many decades, and that it’s not a surprise that this (along with U.S. economic hegemony) resulted in a stateside attack
The conservative talkbackers who regularly respond to stories on this site will probably claim that Vidal, Chomsky and Johnson are unreliable kooks. Well, they’re not. Anyone with a comprehensive understanding of this country’s history of rogue or covert attacks upon nationalistic movements that have been construed to be in opposition to U.S. allies or economic interests is well known.
Of course, this view has never been tolerated in the mainstream media. If you’re unwise enough to say it you’ll get shouted down or shunned. Maggie Gyllenhaal got into trouble in ’05 for saying the U.S. was responsible in some way for the 9.11 attacks. Bill Maher lost his late-night talk show for simply saying the 9.11 attackers, however despicable their acts, weren’t cowards.
There’s one view of 9.11 that is tolerated in this country, and that’s that the devil himself rose up from hell and murdered almost 3,000 people for no reason other than to perpetuate pure evil. There’s no debating it. Either you buy into the party line, or you don’t and you suffer. But sooner or later people in this country are going to have to pull their heads out of the sand.