This Monday, January 17th, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It's a day for us to celebrate one of the most important peacemaking heroes in our nation's history, and an appropriate moment to reflect on the power of nonviolent social activism motivated by love and a sense of justice. For the millions of us who oppose the Afghanistan War (and yes, there are many, many millions of us in the U.S.), Dr. King points the way to the end of the Afghanistan War and beyond, to the onset of the Beloved Community.
Just don't tell the Pentagon.
I was amazed and bewildered to find Pentagon officials and paid military propagandists scrabbling to claim Dr. King as a supporter for war-making. From the general counsel down to the writers at the American Forces Press Service, the military bureaucracy was humming with the assertion that if Dr. King were alive today, he'd "understand" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and would consider the activities that take place while fighting those wars akin to the actions of the Good Samaritan from the Christian gospel story. It was one of the most shameful attempts to cover these brutal, futile wars in humanitarian wallpaper I've seen in years.
Of course, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and the American Forces Press Service are wrong. As our new Rethink Afghanistan video shows, virtually every reason given by King in his "Time to Break the Silence" speech for opposing the Vietnam War would damn the Afghanistan War as well.
Here are just a few examples:
King decried the awful willingness of his country to spend $500,000 per each killed enemy soldier in Vietnam while so many Americans struggled in poverty. Yet last year, a conservative figure for the amount we spent per killed enemy fighter in Afghanistan was roughly $20 million.
King spoke of the "monumental dissent" that arose around the Vietnam War. "Polls reveal that almost 15 million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam," he said. But today, 63 percent of Americans oppose the Afghanistan War, and when you do the math, that's 196 million people, give or take the margin of error.
Dr. King also spoke of the "demonic, destructive suction tube" yanking resources and lives out of the fight to get Americans on their feet. That tube is still demonic and destructive: we've spent more than $360 billion on this war so far and it will cost us roughly $3 billion per week in the coming year. Add to that the 10,000 people, including about 500 U.S. troops and countless civilians who died last year alone, and you can see exactly what he's talking about. The hope of our getting out of this abysmal economic vice is burning on the roadsides of Afghanistan every day we refuse to start bringing troops home.
No, it's safe to say that Dr. King would not regard any conflict that killed 10,000 people in a year as a humanitarian exercise. Nor would he "understand" how a nation in the grip of an economic meltdown like this one could again throw lives and resources away for almost a decade. It's safe to say that he would move beyond the "prophesying of smooth patriotism" and stand up to end this war that's not making us safer and that's not worth the cost.
As Dr. King was fond of reminding us, "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again." Help us spread the truth about his legacy and fight the Pentagon's propaganda by sharing our new video with your friends. Then, join others who want to end this war at http://facebook.com/RethinkAfghanistan.
Follow Robert Greenwald on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robertgreenwald
Robert Kuttner: Consolation and Inspiration From Dr. King
Reverend Martin Luther King
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence *
April 4, 1967 * Riverside Church, New York City *
http://www.archive.org/details/MartinLutherKing-BeyondVietnam-1967
Twelve Laws for World Peace
http://www.dabase.org/12laws.htm
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
April 4, 1967 * Riverside Church, New York City
http://wwwÂ.archive.oÂrg/detailsÂ/MartinLutÂherKing-BeÂyondVietnaÂm-1967
Twelve Laws for World Peace
http://wwwÂ.dabase.orÂg/12laws.hÂtm
Reality-PoÂlitics for Ordinary Men and Women
http://wwwÂ.dabase.orÂg/p8realpoÂlitik.htm
Only Rightness Makes Justice True
http://wwwÂ.dabase.orÂg/p9rightnÂess.htm
So what do we do? Do we sit on the sidelines while leaders such as Saddam Hussein fumigates millions of Kurds? Do we look the other way while dictators murder their own citizens? Do we ignore dictators that attack their neighbors and carry out their genocide? Do we just turn our heads and pretend it does not exist? To do so would be inhumane and against ALL that we as a country stand for.
How successful would we have been in liberating Europe from the Nazi's if we sent 100,000 peace corps workers? What do you think the Iranians would do if we sent over the peace corps? What do you think Osama would do with those peaceful workers if we sent them over there? How WE are defined as a society is how we respond when evil is perpetrated. It is MY opinion that MLK would not have advocated peaceful demonstrations while all of his supporters were being slain in the streets.
9/11 was also part of it. That the adminitration did nothing to prevent it, in spite of pleas from the former administration. They needed justification. How many people will die avenging the 3000 or so?
I suppose it just got that name by accident. Next up: US to fight war in europe on two fronts, invade Russia in the winter, use fork to clean toaster.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
In the World War a handful garnered profits of conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during World War.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket;
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
http://lexrex.com/informed/otherdocuments/warprayer.htm
We live in fear of the terrorists who we have created by our own acts of terrorism masquerading as business ventures around the planet. When we invade a country based on false evidence we do not apologize and leave, no, we dig in and stake our claim to their resources as if this were an entitlement; we live in a world where might makes right and nothing shall come between a war monger and his profits.
When some poor, sad soul completely loses his mind in the sewer we have become and shoots people we are aghast at the violence and it becomes a major news story, something to contemplate and discuss endlessly. As for the hundreds of thousands of dead people in the Middle East, they are of little consequence, not worth writing about or empathizing with because they aren't exceptional like us I guess.
Our national leaders are war criminals all, they who send the youth of America to immorally plunder the planet, killing and torturing in the name of Capitalism and bigger bank accounts for the already wealthy. The lies have been stacked so high that no one questions our motivations any more; the house of cards we live in is sacrosanct but that will not save us when it comes toppling down some day as it must.
Our nation of greedy gamblers will one day meet its Waterloo and its fall will be great for as it is said a house divided against itself can not stand for long. Even nature herself will participate in our unraveling for we have betrayed our Mother Nature and our Father God and for these betrayals we will reap a just sentence, who can say otherwise?
The Future by Leonard Cohen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D97OxHZzBeQ&feature=related