In all the hubbub about Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his relationship vis-a-vis Barak Obama, all the coverage has portrayed the Reverend in a strictly negative light. Whether it's Anderson Cooper 360, Hannity & Colmes, etc. etc., they have to show Reverend Wright talking about our foreign policy and incenuating he's "evil" for his views, and Obama is by default, evil as well. Before I proceed, I am not going to vote for Obama. He's a socialist. But a couple points about his pastor:
(1) He says we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki after fire-bombing them, and we "never batted an eye," yet we're so outraged about 9/11.
Hate to break it to ya, but that's true. A lot more people died after the nuking of those two cities in Japan during World War II, and nobody cared. President Truman even said he "slept like a baby" that night. But yet Truman is a saint to some in the Democratic party.
There was no reason to nuke Japan. The U.S. military had already driven Japanese forces out of all the island posessions they'd taken prior to Pearl Harbor, and those two cities had already been fire-bombed before the dropping of the atom bombs. But because America had to have it's way to the hilt, we had to punish them more than necessary. Also, Truman and the Pentagon felt it necessary to "send a message" to Stalin and Mao not to try to take any more territory.
(2) He says Israel is one of the reasons we were attacked on 9/11 and that Israel is an apartheid state not unlike pre-Mandela South Africa. That's also true. You can read Peter Bergen's interview with Osama bin Laden from 1997, or any other Osama Bin Laden speech and you'll note our support for Israel is one of the reasons so many Arabs and Muslims hate America. And as for the apartheid allegation, I don't know what other comparison could be used for a country that treats one group of people one way, and the other group a lesser way. I don't know what else you could describe a situation in which 500 Jews in Hebron live on and control 20% of the city, and 100,000 Arabs live on the other 80%. I don't know what else you could call a state that lets illegal West Bank settlers (who by the way are living there in violation of the Geneva conventions) have swimming pools in their back yard but has Arabs live on 60 liters of water a day. I don't know what else you would call a state that has "sanitized/Jewish-only roads."
(3) Liberation theology, contrary to what that black guy on Glen Beck who used to be a UN diplomat said last night, is not some concoction of Communist/Marxist countries who felt like they could not destroy the Church so they set out to redefine it. Liberation theology is simply put, a group of people anywhere in the world, who use their theology and the scriptural verses to emphasize the freeing from slavery or oppression. So in America in the 1800s, liberation theology existed among slaves. In pre-1888 Brazil, Catholic clergy who supported the rights of the indigenous and african slaves used adhered to Liberation theology. Same thing with Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. and Dr King Jr. Same thing with Fr. Atallah Hannah, a Jerusalem Orthodox Priest who uses his Christianity to emphasize freedom from Israeli oppression.
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I disagree with point 1. Having recently watched Ken Burn's documentary on WWII, I am convinced that dropping the atomic bomb on japan was the only way to prevent an all-out land seige of the island of Japan, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of american lives and killed many japanese civillians.
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