Martin Luther King Day & Vietnam

The following is excerpted from 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence' by Rev. Martin Luther King, delivered on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.​

 

Interesting, thanks for sharing that. Happy MLK day!

 

Sadly not much change since then huh? Look at the latest blunder that is Iraq.
Happy MLK day.

 

Happy MLK Day.

World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.​

And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.​

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.​

 

"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind" I love this quote.

 

IIRC, it's actually from JFK, Dr. King was quoting him.

 

Yea I know.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...r+war+will+put+an+end+to+mankind"&btnG=Search
Thank you Google!!!

 

Amazing article... Very emotional appeal... End War, Stop this Arrogance, End imperialism...

Dr Martin Luther King was an amazing individual, a charismatic leader. :sigh:

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Martin_Luther_King_Day_Vietnam_and_Dr_Ron_Paul

 

Men like him will be remembered forever! Unlike in contrast to some other leaders who will vanish like a fart in the wind. Cough cough G.W. Bush AKA "The Miserable Failure"

 

http://www.antiwar.com/quotes.php

War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.​

We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.​

The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.​

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.​

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.​

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.​

Nothing good ever comes of violence.​

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.​

We have guided missiles and misguided men.​

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.​

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.​

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.​

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.​

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.​

I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality.​

I'm waiting for a forum neocon to accuse MLK of hating America.

 

Those are some great quotes Guerilla! Thanks. Now we need some of the gun touting neo-con cowboys around here to read them over and over and over again and learn a thing or two.

 

Excuse me while I wretch. It isn't necessary to wait for a neocon.

John Birch Society on Martin Luther King

I agree. Many will consider him as a force for good, and a few will remember him as part of a globalist commie conspiracy reaching to the highest levels, to destroy America.