Pentagon Official: Martin Luther King Jr. Would Support Iraq, Afghan Wars

[6souls]

WASHINGTON -- Although the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is best remembered by the American public for fighting against racial discrimination, he was also an outspoken opponent of war and violence, most notably of the war in Vietnam. A top Obama administration official at the Department of Defense, however, argued Thursday that if King were alive, he would support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At a Pentagon commemoration of King's accomplishments, DOD General Counsel Jeh Johnson said that today's wars are in line with the reverend's teachings.

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack," Johnson said. "Every day, our servicemen and women practice the dangerousness -- the dangerous unselfishness Dr. King preached on April 3, 1968."

In April 1967, King spoke out forcefully against the Vietnam War in a landmark speech at Riverside Church in New York City, criticizing the large amounts of money the United States was spending on fighting rather than taking care of its citizens domestically:

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 young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 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. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. [...]

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 the veins of peoples 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.

Salon's Justin Elliott wrote that while it's impossible to know what King would think of today's wars, this speech "strongly suggests that he would be an opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, for that matter, the secret wars in Yemen and Pakistan."



King's widow, Coretta Scott King, was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq before her death in 2006. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a major figure in the civil rights movement who knew King. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States could build 20 schools with the cost of funding one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

The Pentagon did not return a request for comment.

UPDATE, 4:26 p.m.: ABC's Jake Tapper notes that Johnson graduated from King's alma mater, Morehouse College, and attended school with Martin Luther King III. A partial transcript of his remarks, in which he acknowledges that King sought a world of peace:

Other civil rights leaders urged him to remain silent on the issue, not to alienate President Lyndon Johnson, who had been their best friend on civil rights. Martin Luther King hated violence. He believed that violence is "a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy." ... So beginning in April 1967, one year before he died, Dr. King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, turned his message into an impassioned plea against the war in Vietnam. Indeed, from that point on, he questioned the whole rationale for war in general. [...]

Today, at the Defense Department, how do we honor and respect Dr. King's message and legacy, and reconcile it with our mission? We are a nation at war, and it is the responsibility of this department to prosecute that war. People like to speculate about what Dr. King would believe and say if he were alive today. I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and our nation's military cannot and should not lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack. [...]

Every day, our servicemen and women practice the dangerousness -- the dangerous unselfishness Dr. King preached on April 3, 1968. In accepting his own Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, our president recognized that in response to an unprovoked terrorist attack, war is inevitable to secure peace, and that the role of the military is to keep the peace.

The irony of next Monday is that Mrs. King's dream of a national holiday for her husband has become reality. Dr. King's dream of a world at peace with itself has not.

WATCH (beginning at approximately 22:19):
http://player.theplatform.com/ps/pla...O2FTY1QqeL1z0O

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_809031.html
http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=62448
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/w...ports_our_wars
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/coretta_king.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2611591520100126
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/op...26kristof.html
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...rent-wars.html

[Max™]

Well, that's one of the more disgustingly deplorable things I've heard spewed, actually made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Who's up for a lynching?

[rog]

he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack,"

Oh god.

[Pirian]

King: "Well, the Bible says to turn the other cheek . . . "

Commentator: "Why do you hate America?"

gdi can't find it on youtube:

http://video.tvguide.com/Boondocks/M...correct/336850

[Correction]

[Pirian]

Not what I wanted, if that's why you were posting it

[Correction]

No, just a broader point about how nobody alive seems to really remember the good reverend's words and their meaning.

[Senoska]

Why does shit like this make the news? People at the Pentagon are people and are allowed to have opinions. Just because he said something doesn't mean it's Obama's position. Do you think he sent this guy a memo and was like "Oh yeah, say that Martin Luther King Jr. would support our wars." No. This was just some dick, being a dick.

What do you think should happen to this guy? Should he lose his job over saying something only slightly stupid? Does the fact he said this really upset you? If so, seek help. If not, did this really deserve a thread, or even a post on any website, really?

[archibaldcrane]

It's simply a refreshing reminder of how out of touch the propaganda regarding our military endeavors is.

[Senoska]

So is this thread about that or the fact this guy said stupid shit? I'm confused.

[Correction]

STOP MAKIN' THREADS

God forbid someone uses words on the Internet to describe a current event.

I'm confused.

I'm making my surprised face right now.

[Kuya]

http://i56.tinypic.com/2qa4tuh.jpg

[Ragnus]

[notorious bum]

Just saw Tavis Smiley's special last night basically going over the state of the nation in today's politics, and Dr. Cornell West surmises the exact opposite of this lunatic's ideology.

@2:23:00~
http://www.americasnextchapter.com/watchlive.html

[Khajit]

What the fucking hell.
Are they even TRYING to hide the douchiness anymore?

[Souj]

If Hitler won WW2, 9-11 would have never happened!

[ZarakiKujata]

He would've stopped the jews from causing it.

[Pirian]

http://www.americasnextchapter.com/watchlive.html

Thanks for posting this. That was a fantastic 3 hours

[Salodin]

I wonder how Hitler would have handled the muslim problem..

[Vajra]

Here's another good video about Dr. Martin Luther King and his opposition to war...don't forget he was a Reverend so that's why he's in church preaching in this one...this video is short too btw: