The same day America honored the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington most remembered for Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, America’s first black President appeared on the Newshour to discuss military strikes in Syria.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was as deeply committed to peace and to NON-VIOLENT, non-military solutions to global problems as he was to ending racism. As his analysis of the national, international, and human condition continued to develop, he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, capitalism, and imperialism. He grasped as well as any public figure of his time the institutional power of an unelected, undemocratic web of the economic-military-corporate power at work behind the scenes of American public life.
I was proud of President Obama’s speech from the same spot where where Dr. King had stood 50 years before at the March on Washington. I can’t put that together with his entertainment of military action in Syria. For whatever reason, the media did not seem to notice the incongruity.
Last night’s PBS Newhour featured a conversation about the advisability of “punishing” Syria. University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer’s statements, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head. “Stay out militarily.” Click HERE to listen to the conversation.
The military-industrial-technological-corporate complex feeds of mistakes like Iraq and Afghanistan. Martin Luther King, Jr. never lunched on their food. Nor should we.
Views from the Edge 
Hugely helpful comments Gordon.
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Thanks, Robert. It’s so obvious, or so it seems to me. Why do we not see it?
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Another irony is that the very people who stood up, clicked their heels, and shouted “Hail Victory” when Bush i8nvaded Iraq based on cooked intelligence are the very ones who have been critical of Obama. Is it because he’s Black, a Democrat, or both?
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Woody, good question. I think it’s a combination of the two. I emailed and called my Congressional Representative, Erik Paulsen, a Republican, to register my view that some things are not political. Things like immigration reform, for example are essentially spiritual issues, faith matters, human matters. The Republican Party which once included Mark Hatfield and Nelson Rockefeller was high-jacked by the religious and political right a long time ago. The fact that Obama is Black deepens their opposition. There’s nothing more threatening to the doctrine of white supremacy than a better educated, more literate, more intelligent, more patient Black man. They have no respect for the Office of the President. They only respect it when their boy sits in the Oval Office.
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I also don’t get why Obama wants to do this. He has had several issues where he has not followed thru with what he said before he was elected: getting out of Afghanistan and closing Guantanamo. Now he wants to take us into another war with no reason that is clear to me. I am very disappointed in him because of this. Like you, Gordon, I thought his speech in Washington yesterday was wonderful.
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It’s very disturbing. We’ve been down this road too many times and apparently haven’t learned. Great Britain is not with us on this. We remember too well the excited reports of Saddam’s hidden weapons of mass destruction and the bogus intelligence about the rods used by a section of the intelligence community to justify pre-emptive war with Iraq. The intelligence was startlingly wrong then. It should not be trusted now. At some point this has to stop, and if it doesn’t stop while Obama is in the White House, WHEN and how will it ever stop? Part of what we need to do is lift up the other dimensions of Martin Luther King, Jr’s witness. In other words, you don’t get to Canonize him or make a Saint of him without canonizing the be-sainting the whole man, not just the part that’s easy to swallow.
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Gee all of those dead woman and children just appeared from nowhere. It is not an easy decision but I suspect MLK would be troubled by the use of chemical weapons.
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John, Troubled, yes. Approving U.S. military action. No.
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