Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"
copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
~ Martin Luther King, Junior.
Days from now America will commemorate an anniversary. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Junior was brutally assassinated. Citizens will recall the wisdom of a man who lived for peace and yet, fell victim to violence. Homage will be bestowed. The American people will praise the preacher, the teacher, and the man who taught us all to speak of what remained tacit for too long. In the United States of America, all men are not equal. As a country, we do not treat people well. Nor do government officials lead us to the promised light of world harmony.
Reverend Martin Luther King spoke of the sorrow that Americans gives rise to throughout the globe. However, most recall only portions of his homilies. In memorial, people do as is characteristic. They remember the platitudes oft repeated and conveniently forget the profound angst expressed.
"I have a dream," is imprinted on the minds of most Americans. The words ring out. They are spelled out in historical accounts that focus on achievements. Anglo Americans believe in this the "land of the free" we have accomplished much. Perhaps, the mission is complete. Caucasians remind themselves of what they believe is infinite progress. Yet, those who experience the nightmare that lives large in their day-to-day experience recall another statement the Reverend made.
As Doctor Martin Luther King Junior reflected upon what was and what might have been he saw the gains were never fully realized. As an imminent war evolved into an extended and bloody encounter the Preacher proclaimed . . .
[M]y fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents . . .There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam [Afghanistan, Iraq, name of war or incident you choose] and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam [insert the name of another battle] and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.
We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit.
Martin Luther King, advocate of nonviolence and peace witnessed that America had not truly come together to bring about racial harmony. Persons with darker skin tones were called to combat in numbers that far exceeded the percent evident in the population at-large. King understood classes were not integrated. The divide between the rich and the poor had not been eliminated. Indeed, the evidence of this was prominent in the Corps.
Reverend King felt as many Americans did, particularly those most profoundly affected by policies and practices that remained unchanged. The impoverished, those who have fewer opportunities in a nation forever fractured, are asked to fight for the rights they do not realize. The underprivileged, the deprived, those reduced to ruin are expected to serve a nation that does not provide for them. Doctor King declared on April 4, 1967 before a Riverside Church congregation . . .
I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam [Iraq, Afghanistan, or perhaps Iran, Korea . . .]?They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
The Reverend Martin Luther King, a year to the day before his demise felt it was time to speak to the injustices he saw within his own nation and how the approach of the Administration circumvented attempts to reach the mountaintop known as tranquility. For too long, too many, Doctor King among them, had remained silent. Americans accepted truths, for talk of what is real was thought taboo. No one wishes to defame the land they call home. However, reluctantly, as Reverend King acknowledged . . .
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam [September 11, 2001, wars in Afghanistan . . .]The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. 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.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King felt he must address an issue that remains stalwart. Today, the situation has not changed, much to the contrary of claims among Caucasians and the affluent.
Regardless of the principles presented in the Constitution, in this country Black Americans are not free. However, those whose skin is dark are asked to defend Anglo Americans from supposed enemies, and they do. People whose complexions are purplish-brown fill the battlefields; they patriotically serve the homeland. Frequently, too frequently, African-Americans, who were never fully accepted in their native country fall. Before they ever experience what has long been a dream, equality, Black Americans perish. In a desire to protect the freedoms they have never had, our Black and Brown brethren pass.
Anglo Americans know this; yet do not wish to acknowledge what is true. Instead, Caucasians criticize anyone who might mention what is fact. Recently, Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been the source of scorn. Wright dared to deliver a sermon, which addressed the issue of inequity.
After the September 11, 2001, tragedy, Americans again chose the path of war. African-Americans were once more called to battle. The then Pastor of United Trinity Church of Christ, Chicago, Illinois Jeremiah Wright was distressed about what he saw as a shame. In a nation founded on the noble principle of freedom, people of color were not.
Reverend Wright spoke of his anguish. Yet, few outside the congregation heard more than a minute of what was said. Anglo-Americans not in attendance assumed they knew the essence of the message, although they had not read the text. The pinkish people, pale of skin did not realize he Reverend quoted the words of a white man, an United States Ambassador to Iraq, and Deputy Director of President Ronald Reagan's task force on terrorism, Edward Peck. Anglos did not realize that words and thoughts Jeremiah Wright discussed were those of a white man who believed America's foreign policy was the cause for the calamity that placed this nation in peril.
Nor did the masses and classes, those not subject to racism reflect on how the words Wright offered were similar to those of another leader, one often honored as a Saint might be. White Christians and Jews forever forgiving did not consider that Reverend Wright quoted the sentiments of a white man, a right-winged Republican official, a man who served with the esteemed Ronald Reagan in his sermon. Pray tell, might we consider the full text of Jeremiah Wright's homily.
“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.
“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.
“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.
“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.
“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.
“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.
“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.
“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”
Indeed, Anglo Americans must come to terms with the turmoil those who claim to be free of judgment, and ready to forgive, have done to destroy the likes of a passionate preacher and a Presidential aspirant. Pinkish people in the "United" States need to ponder the power of punitive pronouncements. We, the white people must wonder, in what way we resemble the Almighty when we slam and damn our brethren and banish him from our hearts.
Currently, Caucasians claim to be colorblind. Indeed, Anglos are merely colormute. Anglo American citizens call for patriotism. In truth, jingoism justifies the combat that benefits the affluent and the pinkish Americans who administer the Armed Forces. Military missions are a show of might, in the name of right. Actually, fear of our fellow man leads us to fight against those whose appearance differs from ours, whose ideology does not reassure us. Anglo Americans may cry, "We honor the soldiers and support the troops." In truth, in a show of love, we lead our dark complexioned young and our poor persons of all colors to their death. Anglos and affluent individuals might realize as Reverend Jeremiah Wright did, "This is a time for self-examination." "This was a time for me to examine my own relationship with G-d [or whatever force brings personal enlightenment to you.]" If America is to change, to progress to become a nation of equals, perchance, pale persons might ponder the words of the honorable Martin Luther King Junior and remember.
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.This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 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 are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity . . .
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 [Afghanistan, Iraq, name of war or incident you choose] 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.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
Anglos and the affluent, your actions, reactions determine our future. Will we be separate and unequal or join as one. Can we continue in silence, pretend to be colorblind, and remain colormute? The time is now. The import is intense. We must speak of the pain and plight of the impoverished. It is vital that each of us ask ourselves and our brethren to reflect on what is too real for those who are less privileged, or for people of color.
If we are to be united within the States, if we are to work as a world, one in harmony then we must all heed the words of our Pastor's, Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and the Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Wright. Let us not demonize those who speak of love and fellowship. Might the white people in their wondrous glory forgive those who did not trespass, but spoke the truth that haunts those who remain silent.
Homilies, Sermons, Sources . . .
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