Indefensible Offense

Obama, radical leader of the Obamanations, has finally denounced his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because of assertions the reverend has made about the United States’ role in worldwide terror. The senator claims that such statements “rightly offend all Americans.” As a patriot not running for office, I disagree.

Why should anyone be offended by the truth? Our foreign policy lacks as much moral integrity as anyone else’s. Considering that that policy is based on an inability to examine the skeletons swinging from our own poplar trees, is it any wonder people hate us/the US? (Since I feel obliged to answer all rhetorical questions: no, it is no wonder.)

From what I can see, the only thing Wright is guilty of is taking liberation theology—that found in the “Old” Testament, not the all-too-easily digestible version popular nowadays—seriously. To understand his context, I suggest reading any of the Prophets, perhaps starting with Wright’s namesake himself: Jeremiah.

If the U.S. is seriously against terror, then it needs to not only refrain from terrorist activities but it also needs to stop creating terrorists as well. Chomsky knows this. Wright knows this. I and a couple of other people know this. Lao-Tzu knew it more than 2,500 years ago. Jesus knew it about half a century after him. (If you don’t believe me, take a look at Matthew 26:52.)

What I find despicable is Obama’s denunciation of Wright on purely political grounds. The politician finally shows himself. Now can we finally stop talking about race in America and get back to the task at hand: deciding who the next American Idol will be. (And I’m not even talking about that damned singing contest....)

The Unnamable (A Protocol)

9/11 is an American quasi-logo denoting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which becomes in its use an ideogram in which we continually re-inscribe the Twin Towers. Lower Manhattan is the public face of those attacks: the destruction of the World Trade Center and the ever-present absence of those towers, which have since been temporarily replaced with columns of smoke, light displays, and nothing.

Throughout history, major events (read: battles) have always been site-specific and therefore marked geographically: Carthage, Troy, Waterloo, Crimea, and the Alamo. Even in our Christian teleological worldview, the battle at the end of history (the battle to end all history) is geo-positioned: “Armageddon” is the Latinized-Anglicization of Mount Megiddo in Israel. However, in our naming 9/11, we seek to remove it from the realm of merely human, merely earthly events, displacing its geographical specificity (that is, New York, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania) and assigning it instead a place in history. 9/11 is, after all, a historical date.

Derrida reminds us that “referring to an event with a date automatically gives it historical stature: it monumentalizes it.” Yet it is a date on the Gregorian calendar, a calendar with its origin in Roman Catholic Europe. So, when we write 9/11, we not only inscribe the World Trade Center again and again, we too denote our own Christian and European heritages as Americans (as well as perhaps deny our indebtedness to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America).

The use of the month before the day, however, specifically indicates the style typically employed in the United States. Thus, 9/11 is also an inscription of American exceptionalism and difference. But every date on every calendar repeats every year; therefore, we cannot completely extract the marker of those events, dispersing them into pure timelessness and monumentalization. September 11 will repeat, even if that particular September 11 is over and done with.

9/11 too denotes the fragmentary and fractional—a literal fraction (nine-elevenths): a whole unit minus and missing two pieces (the Twin Towers?). Most significant, however, is the fact that despite all the rhetoric of us (Americans) versus them (the Muslims, or the Arabs), we Americans use what is commonly referred to as “Arabic numerals.” Considered an important milestone in the development of mathematics, these numbers were developed around 400 BCE in India and were later transferred via the Persians to Western Europe.

9/11, in this way, also exposes our reliance on Eastern “others,” including Arabs, for the development and advancement of our science and technology sectors that would come to create skyscrapers and jet airliners in the first place. Ultimately, there could be no “us” without “them.” 9/11, in this way, inscribes as well as denies a common world heritage and a common world event.