Obama Bulletin Blowback: Wright’s Stated and Sanctioned Equations of US War Efforts with Terrorism Are Nothing New, and Have Been Frequent

Note: For background on Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s previous appearances (Moyers, NAACP, and National Press Club), go here.

There’s been no shortage of follow-up commentary on the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright situation, but I can assure you that the matters discussed here have not been addressed by anyone else.

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Many of the comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senior Pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) at his Washington National Press Club appearance — comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced Tuesday as “divisive and destructive” at his press conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — have been visible and recurring themes in TUCC’s weekly church bulletins for at least several years.

Most controversially, a review of over 125 digital editions of the bulletins I have come to possess, representing about 60% of those I would expect have been issued in the past four years, shows that on at least two occasions Wright himself, and at least one writer whose work Wright reprinted in the “Pastor’s Page” section of the bulletin, have done what Obama expressed outrage over on Tuesday: “equate(d) the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism.”

Though it is not known whether Obama has read, or remembers reading, bulletin content containing such material in the 20 years he has been attending TUCC, there are circumstantial reasons to believe that he would have come across it during that time.

The “wartime efforts” Obama referred to Tuesday extend back, in Wright’s view, over 60 years.

In the August 7, 2005 bulletin, TUCC’s pastor went back to World War II (bolds are mine; the related TUCC bulletin page is here), actually extending the the scope of the related well-known video clip on the same topic further:

Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Hiroshima

Just as most African Americans did not know that this weekend marked the 60th anniversary of the most heinous act of terrorism since chattel slavery – the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – most African Americans also did not know why the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition was having a march in Atlanta to gain support for the Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.

The primary reason most African Americans (and most Americans in general) did not know about Hiroshima is because of the suppression of all the film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. The U.S. Government did not want the American public to see the horror we created as we killed 300,000 civilians in an act of terrorism.

Wright’s related sermon video strongly criticizes the atomic bombings, but does not specifically call them out as acts of terrorism.

Referring to a more recent war, in the third page of an essay in the January 2, 2005 bulletin entitled “A New Year” (pictured here [Page 8] and here [Pages 9 and 10]), Wright wrote the following (bold is mine):

We have the challenge of explaining to our children why the sodomy and rape at Abu Graib (sic) committed by American troops and sanctioned by higher ups all the way up (higher) to the Pentagon and beyond is not defined as terrorism while what other people do to us is defined as terrorism. The challenges ahead of us are great.

Finally, another writer’s work, reprinted by Wright, sought to minimize the significance of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. compared to what this writer saw in many cases as equal or greater crimes.

The September 17, 2006 bulletin, issued shortly after the previous week’s commemorations of the fifth anniversary of the attacks, contains “September 11 — A Moment of Silence for All the Others,” a poem written in 2002 by Emmanuel Ortiz. Wikipedia describes Ortiz as “a Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American activist and spoken-word poet.”

The poem recites Ortiz’s reactions on the first anniversary of the attacks.

Here are some excerpts from that poem (pictured in its entirety as it appeared in TUCC’s bulletin here and here):

A MOMENT OF SILENCE BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,

Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive …..

….. If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence,
put a brick through
the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses,
the jailhouses, the Penthouses and
the Playboys.

….. You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all… Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing… For our dead.

Barack Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s National Press Club comments might lead many that the Illinois Senator is not aware of any of the three terror-equating items just noted.

But, as noted in a previous report at Pajamas Media on TUCC and its bulletins, there is reason to believe that Obama may have been aware of the terror-equating positions of Wright long before his Tuesday denunciation of it:

• TUCC’s bulletins are distributed to attendees each week before services begin.
• Each bulletin contains one or more “Sermon Notes” page.
• “Sermon Notes” pages are usually no more than one or two turns of the page away from Wright’s “Pastor’s Pages” and other opinion-based content.
• Obama was seen taking notes during a Wright sermon by Ryan Lizza, then of the New Republic, who wrote a March 2007 profile of Obama. Whether Obama was taking notes in the page(s) provided in the bulletin or on separate paper is not known.

In the three instances just cited, the terror-equating content and the Sermon Notes appear on the following nearby bulletin pages:

• August 7, 2005 — Wright calls dropping of atomic bombs in World War II “terrorism” - Page 7; Sermon Notes - Page 5.

January 2, 2005 — Wright’s “A New Year” essay - Pages 8-10 (Abu Ghraib mentioned on Page 10); Sermon Notes - Page 5.

September 17, 2006 — Ortiz’s Poem - Pages 9-12; Sermon Notes - Page 6.

Moreover, there is the question of whether TUCC’s bulletin content has generally supported or mirrored sermons delivered at its services.

At many churches, it is not unusual for the cleric who gives the homily or sermon to work to ensure that the Saturday or Sunday bulletin content reflects or supplements what he or she will say from the pulpit. Based on my review of TUCC’s bulletin content thus far, if Wright made such an effort, the likelihood that Obama has heard objectionable sermons increases significantly, even if the Illinois Senator rarely looked at the potentially controversial sections of TUCC’s bulletins.

Even if Wright’s sermons were typically divorced from bulletin content, the fact (confirmed with a bulletin-involved person at TUCC) that the bulletins are distributed before services begin, and the high frequency at which potentially controversial content can be found in those bulletins, increase the likelihood that Obama became aware of items which he, based on the various statements he has made during the past few weeks, should have “vehemently condemn(ed).”

THE person involved with the publication of TUCC’s weekly bulletin whome I spoke with almost two weeks ago indicated that the church is no longer posting new editions of the bulletins at its web site, and that this practice will continue indefinitely. When asked, no reason was provided as to why recent bulletins have not been posted online. TUCC’s “Online Bulletin” page, as it appeared at press tim, contains no link to a published bulletin.