Letter to the Editor:
Iraq and Vietnam: M.L. King’s 1967 Speech Still Rings True
by Prof. Michael Fischbach··································
March 19 will mark the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. The war in Iraq has wrought so much destruction since March 19, 2003, wasted so much money, and ruined so many lives – both here in the U.S. but especially in Iraq – that it is difficult to take it all in. To date nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and over 28,000 have been wounded. Tens (some say hundreds) of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. The U.S. already has spent $500 billion in Iraq – about $4,100 per American household. And yet there is no end to the war in sight.
There is little one can add to the anti-war sentiments that already have been expressed by many people, in many places, over the past several years. Therefore, perhaps an appropriate thing for me to suggest is that we look instead to history (I am an historian, after all), and reflect on the soulful words of dissent uttered by a great American forty-one years ago, during a different war that was equally tragic, expensive, and destructive. In his famous “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967 – one year to the day before he was murdered – the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained his principled opposition to that war with words that are both timeless and eerily appropriate to the situation facing America today in Iraq. In reflecting on where we stand five years since America attacked Iraq, reflect on some of what King said on that April day long ago. Where he says “Vietnam,” just insert “Iraq.” Put “terrorism” instead of “communism,” and “oil monarchs of the Middle East” instead of “landed gentry of Latin America” to bring his words up to speed for 2008. It is sad to note how little this country seems to have changed since King urged Americans to end that tragic war and adopt a new and just relationship with the developing world:
“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on….Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be, are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land….”
“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world, as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours….The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways….”
“Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken – the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies….”
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values….This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer….We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops….”
“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies….Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word’….”
“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight….”
“And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
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