You knew it was coming: some sort of explanation or apology for Rashard Mendenhall’s comments regarding Osama Bin Laden’s death. He wrote an open letter on his (new?) blog, entitled Clarification.
Give it a read and come back…
Are you back? Great. Here we go:
I see how they have gotten misconstrued…
Oh, boy. Not a good start. As if the statements alone are not controversial — the reader or some third party has missed the point.
This controversial statement was something I said in response to the amount of joy I saw in the event of a murder… I was reflecting on our own hypocrisy. During 9/11 we watched in horror as parts of the world celebrated death on our soil. Earlier this week, parts of the world watched us in horror celebrating a man’s death.
Two things jump out about his argument here. First of all, we watched in horror as parts of the world celebrated death of innocents on our soil. Is it so wrong for us to celebrate that murderer’s death? For 10 long years, the spectre of Osama Bin Laden has hung over this country like a rain cloud, while he mocked us from afar. The United States has gotten into two separate wars using OBL/Al-Qaeda as justification, and it has had a terrible impact on our economy and life at home. What’s worse, this was the monster’s plan all along.
Maybe taking to the streets in celebration is not the most enlightened thing to do, but it’s certainly understandable that the U.S. population would feel an overwhelming sense of relief to know that the person ultimately responsible for bringing us so much pain has finally been brought to justice. It’s not so much that OBL is dead, it’s that we finally found him.
The other problem with Mendenhall’s clarification is that he completely glosses over the “We’ve only heard one side…” bit. What does that mean? To the average reader, it sounds like Mendenhall wants us to better understand OBL’s reasoning for attacking the World Trade Center that day. The thing is, we understand it. Mendenhall is the one that doesn’t get it. He says we haven’t heard OBL speak. Only we have, in countless recordings and video tapes.
Reading through the rest of his letter, it strikes me as odd that he would completely ignore this beauty:
This tweet was deleted, and Mendenhall is probably hoping that this one will just go away. But that’s the great thing about Twitter and “print screen” — anything you say has the potential to live on forever. Clearly, Mendenhall doesn’t believe that those airplanes took down the towers that day, and this belief might relate to his “We’ve only heard one side…” bit from before.
Mendenhall says things like “Those who judge others, will also be judged themselves” and “I believe in God. I believe we’re ALL his children. And I believe HE is the ONE and ONLY judge” yet isn’t he judging those who were happy to hear the news of OBL’s demise? What right does he have to criticize others?
Want some hypocrisy? There you have it.
