Eric Stoner is a writer based in New York, who has written for numerous publications, including The Nation and the Peoria Journal Star. he can be reached at ericstoner1@gmail.com.
Forty years ago this week, on April 4, 1967, and a year to
the day before his tragic assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to
the pulpit of New York's Riverside Church to deliver one of the most
controversial speeches of his life.
Entitled "
Beyond Vietnam," the address was King's first public antiwar speech, and
he gave it only after much trepidation and prayer. Believing that silence in
the face of injustice is in fact complicity with evil, King wrote in his
autobiography that, "The time had come—indeed it was past due—when I had to
disavow and dissociate myself from those who in the name of peace burn, maim
and kill."
As anticipated, King was roundly criticized at the time for straying from
civil rights, not only by the mainstream media, but also by allies such as the
NAACP. "It was a low period in my life," he wrote. "I could hardly open a
newspaper."
Now, however, history has vindicated the truths that King so bravely spoke
that day, and his testimony is rightfully seen as a prophetic masterpiece.
While still mesmerizing, listening to the speech today can also be somewhat
disconcerting. It painfully reveals how little has changed and how
politicians, both then and now, use the same rhetorical devices to scare the
public into supporting misguided policies. By simply swapping the word " Iraq"
for "Vietnam," and "terrorism" for "communism" King's speech could be given
today, with little need for editing.
Before describing in some depth how the U.S. betrayed the Vietnamese, first by
supporting "the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam," then
by propping up the "vicious" dictator Diem and finally by nearly wiping the
country off the map through its extensive bombing and use of napalm, King
said: "They must see Americans as strange liberators."
In Iraq parallels abound. The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he massacred
his own people during the 1980s, obliterated Iraq during the first Gulf War,
imposed oppressive, deadly sanctions for nearly 13 years and finally invaded
and occupied the emaciated country in 2003. In place of napalm, the U.S.
military has now switched to another, more effective chemical to burn Iraqis—white
phosphorus. And in our noble effort to bring democracy, we've also
generously littered the country with cluster
bombs and thousands of tons of poisonous depleted
uranium, which will cause dramatically increased rates of cancer and birth
defects for generations. Strange liberators, indeed.
Speaking of the soldiers, King said:
We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
One can only imagine the cognitive
dissonance of our soldiers today, knowing that every reason that they were
originally given to kill and be killed has been thoroughly debunked, even by
the mainstream press. Moreover, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority's
blatant effort
to privatize nearly everything in Iraq, and our current advocacy for Iraq's
new oil law—which if passed by the Iraqi Parliament will be highly
advantageous to foreign, meaning American, oil companies—can leave little
doubt whose side we're currently on.
Speaking on the bogeyman of his time, King declared: "War is not the answer.
Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear
weapons." The greatest defense against communism, he argued,
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.
The same can undoubtedly be said for
terrorism, which cannot and will not ever be defeated by violence or war.
Apart from the fact that terrorism is a tactic used in asymmetric warfare, not
a tangible enemy, even the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that our
wars have only exacerbated the threat of another attack and fanned the flames
of international extremism.
King is perhaps most relevant today, however, when he takes that extra step in
his analysis to address the roots of the conflict. "The war in Vietnam is but
a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit," King poignantly
noted, brought on by what he called, "the giant triplets of racism, extreme
materialism and militarism" that plague our society.
Hesitantly calling his own government, "the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today," King issued a piercing warning that reaches us across the
decades loud and clear: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more
money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death."
As the bloated Pentagon budget swells further—this year to over
$600 billion—America becomes more of a one-trick pony, known the world
over not for its kindness and generosity, but rather its brutality and
dangerous quick trigger.
While that spiritual death seems closer now than ever, I think that King would
still hold out hope that we could see the light before its too late and live
up to ourselves. But to do so, we must snap out of our culturally-induced coma
and lead that "revolution of values" that King called for and that we remain
so desperately in need of.