By Gary G. Kohls
Martin
Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A
Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year before his
April, 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech, King declared,
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death.”
The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of
the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the
Vietnam War and its destructive impact on social progress in the United
States. In explaining his decision to follow his conscience and speak
out against U.S. militarism, King said:
“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.”
But King went farther, diagnosing the broader
disease of militarism and violence that was endangering the soul of the
United States. King said, “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.”
Poisoning America’s Soul
King
knew very well that the disease of violence was killing off more than
social progress in America. Violence was sickening the nation’s soul as
well. He added “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the
autopsy must read ‘Vietnam’.” King urged his fellow citizens to take up
the causes of the world’s oppressed, rather than taking the side of the
oppressors. He said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the
right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a
radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a
‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines
and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and
militarism are incapable of being conquered.
“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 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.”
King pointed to an alternate path into the future: “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?”
Signing His Own Death Warrant
By
denouncing so forcefully the war crimes that the U.S. military was
committing daily in the killing fields of Vietnam, some of King’s
followers understood that he had just signed his own death warrant. But
King, being a person of conscience, was compelled to express his deep
sense of moral outrage over the horrific maiming, suffering and dying of
millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians in that unjust war that
afflicted mostly unarmed women and children and that was going to leave
behind lethal poisons in the soil, water and unborn babies that would
last for generations.
He knew that non-combatants are always the
major victims of modern warfare, especially wars that indiscriminately
used highly lethal weapons that rained down from the air, especially the
U.S. Air Force’s favorite weapon, napalm — the flaming, jellied
gasoline that burned the flesh off of whatever part of the burning adult
or child it splashed onto.
King also connected the racist acts
(of American soldiers joyfully killing dispensable non-white “gooks” and
“slants” — often shooting at “anything that moves”) on the battlefields
of Southeast Asia to the oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and
lynching of dispensable, deprived non-white “niggers” in America.
King
saw the connections between the violence of racism and the violence of
poverty. He saw that the withholding of economic and educational
opportunities came from the fear of “the other” and the perceived need
to protect the white culture’s wealth and privilege – with violence if
necessary.
King knew, too, that fortunes are made in every war,
and the war in Vietnam was no exception. In his speeches, he talked
about that unwelcome reality that the ruling class preferred not be
discussed. That meant his well-attended Riverside Church speech
threatened not only the powerful interests already arrayed against his
civil rights struggle but also the interests of the war profiteers and
the national security establishment.
War is Good Business
The
longer the Vietnam War lasted, the more the weapons manufacturers
thrived. With their huge profits, there was a strong incentive for these
financial elites to continue the carnage. And therefore the Wall Street
war profiteers financed, out of their ill-gotten gains, battalions of
industry lobbyists and pro-military propagandists who descended upon
Washington, DC, and the Pentagon to claim even more tax dollars for
weapons research, development and manufacture.
With that funding
secured, armies of desperate jobs-seekers were hired to work in
thousands of weapons factories that were strategically placed in
congressional districts almost everywhere, with weapons research grants
likewise being awarded to virtually every university in the nation.
Thus, weapons-manufacturing and R&D soon became vitally important
for almost every legislator’s home district economy as well as for the
household budgets of millions of American voters who indirectly
benefitted from the U.S. military’s killing, maiming, displacement,
starvation and suffering of non-white people in war zones.
King’s
anti-war stance was based on his Christianity and on the ethics and life
of Jesus, but it was also based on his standing as a revered
international peace and justice icon. Those factors made him a dangerous
threat to the military/industrial/congressional/security complex.
The
powerful forces that were working hard to discredit King had already
infiltrated the civil rights movement. Their efforts, cunningly led by
the proto-fascist and racist J. Edgar Hoover and his obedient FBI,
accelerated after the Riverside speech. The FBI ramped up the smear
campaigns against King. Eventually he was “neutralized” with a bullet to
the head. [The case for believing that King’s murder was not simply the
act of lone gunman James Earl Ray is laid out in many studies,
including attorney William F. Pepper’s
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King.]
King’s Prophetic Vision
Now,
almost five decades after his anti-war speech (which was widely kept
from the public), it is clear how prophetic King’s observations were.
America is indeed losing its soul. Violence, racism, militarism and
economic oppression are still American epidemics.
Both upper- and
middle-class investors of get-rich-quick schemes in America have
succumbed to predatory lenders, cannibalistic corporate mergers and
acquisitions, psychopathic multinational corporate schemers, corrupt
crony capitalists, and the rapist/exploiters of the land and water by
extractive industries – all schemes that will eventually burst as part
of predictable economic bubbles.
Those busted bubbles regularly
wipe out investors (except for the large, deep-pocketed “insiders” who,
usually being forewarned, will have sold their holdings just in time,
before the publicly revealed “bust”), leaving the taxpayers to bail out
the financial messes that were created by the so-called “invisible hand
of the market” but are really caused by the cunning work of corporate
gamblers.
King was trying to warn us not just about the oncoming
epidemic of violence toward victims at home but also about the tens of
millions of people around the world who were and are still being
victimized by U.S. military misadventures. King was also warning us
about the multinational corporate war profiteers whose interests are
facilitated and protected by the U.S. military – whether they are
operating in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
The
Pentagon budget averages well over $700 billion per year, including wars
that are often illegal and unconstitutional. That amounts to $2 billion
per day with no visible return on investment, except for the military
contractors, the oil industries and Wall Street financiers.
Vast
sums also are needed to address the physical and mental health costs
needed for the palliative care for the permanently maimed and
psychologically-traumatized veterans. Hundreds of millions of dollars
more are spent paying down the interest payments on past military debts.
All
those potentially bankrupting costs represent money that will never be
available for programs of social uplift like combatting racism, poverty
and hunger, or paying for affordable housing/healthcare, universal
education or meaningful job creation. Can anyone else hear a demonic
laugh reverberating down Wall Street?
King was warning America
about its oncoming spiritual death if it didn’t convert itself away from
military violence. But most observers of the U.S. see America still
worshipping at the altars of the Gods of War and Greed. Our children may
be doomed.
The vast majority of American Christian churches
(whether fundamentalist, conservative, moderate or liberal, with very
few exceptions) have failed King’s vision, despite the lip service they
sometimes give to King on MLK Day. Churches whose members were brought
up on the Myth of American Exceptionalism (and the myth of being “God’s
chosen people”) consistently refuse to take a stand against the satanic
nature of war.
Past the Point of No Return?
If
America is to avert future financial and military catastrophes, King’s
central warnings about the “triple evils” of militarism, racism and
economic oppression must be heeded. That means a retreat from worldwide
network of budget-busting military bases. And, if America wants to shed
the justified label of “Rogue Nation,” the covert killing operations of
its secret black ops mercenary military units all around the world must
be stopped, as should the infamous extrajudicial assassinations by
America’s unmanned drones.
If King’s 47-year-old warning continues
to be ignored, America’s future is bleak. The future holds the dark
seeds of economic chaos, hyperinflation, unendurable poverty, increasing
racial/minority hostility, worsening malnutrition, armed rebellion,
street fighting, and perhaps, ultimately, institution of a reactionary
totalitarian/surveillance police state in order to control citizen
protests and quell rebellions.
In 1967, many Americans considered
King hopeful vision for a better future as irrational idealism. He was
told that the task was too great, the obstacles were too imposing, and
there was no will for even the churches to reverse their age-old,
conservative pseudo-patriotism and society’s institutional racism. I
suspect that many of the churches that called King a communist and
therefore ignored him back then wish that they could turn back the clock
and give King’s (and Jesus’s) path a try.
King finished his
speech with these challenges: “War is not the answer. 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 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.”
And he had these sobering words for the churches that are
immersed in a polytheistic culture (the worship of multiple gods,
including the gods of war and mammon) and thus are tempted to quietly
ally themselves with those gods rather than the God of Love that King
was devoted to:
“I have traveled the length and breadth of
Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. I have looked at
her beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I
have beheld the impressive outlay of her massive religious education
buildings. Over and over again I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of
people worship here? Who is their God?’”
Today, the task is even
tougher, the obstacles much more imposing, but the path that King
outlined remains. MLK Day should be a good time to start seriously
reconsidering King’s radical message.
~ Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician who writes about peace, justice, militarism, mental health and religious issues.