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What King Would Say about War
January 17, 2010
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When it comes to matters of war and peace, the question we need to ask ourselves is: Who do we trust? Who has the right view on these matters? Who best can guide us in such a way that we improve the odds that we will have what we want, which I assume is peace, since few, if any, claim to love war?
Isn’t it interesting that even though people say they love peace, they still promote the use of military force. We have no choice, they say. It is a necessary evil, they say, perhaps with a little discomfort. Nevertheless, there does seem to be something remarkable in people’s acceptance, even support of the instruments of war, in my mind. Recently, I watched a YouTube clip of an interview of Glenn Beck by Jay Leno. I admit that I am not a regular viewer of Glenn Beck’s show, but I did find some of the things he said in that interview intriguing. For example, he made the point that Thomas Jefferson asserted that he would rather have 12 farmers on a jury than 12 scholars. In responding to Leno’s point that President Obama is an intelligent man who went to Harvard, Beck said that there is a difference between education and wisdom. Leno said you could have both education and wisdom and Beck agreed. Now, I agree with Glenn Beck, that there is a difference between education and wisdom. We can all agree that we want to have people who know what they are doing when they are serving us, either fixing our plumbing, drilling our teeth, teaching our children, preaching the good word or leading our nation. But when it comes to leading our nation, it is not just a matter of brilliance that counts, wisdom and political courage are perhaps even more important. Consider the sad case of Robert McNamara, a brilliant analyst during World War II and for the Ford Motor Company before he became Secretary of Defense. I think that is fair to say that he, perhaps more than any one person, had orchestrated our war in Vietnam and yet, he knew by 1967 that it was unwinnable and did nothing to stop it. In fact, he did not acknowledge his qualms until he wrote a book called In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam in 1995 more than 25 years later. He, again, perhaps more than any one person could have spoken up and made a difference, but chose not to. And it was not because of his lack of smarts that he did not do so. So, I agree with Glenn Beck, that there is a difference between education and wisdom, between brilliance and political courage. At this critical time in our nation’s history, we need to know who has more than smarts, but the wisdom and political courage to help us to solve our difficult problems involving political, social and military issues. As to the President, no issue is more important in which he has the power to control than that of the issue of war and peace. Who then do we trust on the issue of war and peace? People seem to turn to military leaders for guidance about whether we need to use military force or when we are in a military conflict, to stay, escalate or withdraw. After all, we might reason, they know about war. It’s there business. But again, just because these military leaders have studied war does not mean they have the wisdom and political courage to speak the truth. And certainly, the president with all his smarts, can yield to political pressure to use military force simply because he is afraid to appear weak.
But sadly, it seems that those who counsel peace are often not listened to; they are ignored or attacked, sometimes viciously so. Indeed, they are often called unpatriotic and naVve.
A prime example of that was the response to Martin Luther King’s speech called “Beyond Vietnam” given at Riverside Church in New York City, given on 4 April 1967, a year to the day before his assassination. I will not spend hours discussing and analyzing this speech though I could given King’s depth of reasoning and grasp of history, plus it was almost an hour long. I can say, though, that in it, he gave wise counsel and accurate analysis of the problems of the Vietnam War and of war in general. It is a shame that the powers that be did not listen to him and do as he suggested.
But we can note that even King did not have the wisdom and political courage to speak up against the war before that speech. He did speak out against it mildly in 1965, but then received a strong rebuke from President Lyndon Johnson. King admired Johnson and did not want to alienate him, since President Johnson had done more for the human rights of African Americans than any other President save Abraham Lincoln, and had done more to relieve the suffering of poor people and senior citizens than any other president save Franklin Roosevelt.
But those intervening two years tormented King, who once commented that he would not be considered as a candidate for a book like John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. King was fond of this quote by Dante: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. Thus, as he said in his Riverside speech, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
In this speech, King acknowledged the difficulty in speaking out against the war. “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth,” he said, “men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.”
We all have busy lives and we have our families, friends, and careers as our central concerns. Thus, it is easy to avoid the world of politics, especially in considering the issues of war and peace. It is far easier and more enjoyable, for example to think and talk about who will be the next Super Bowl Champ. And we want to believe in our government, that our leaders know what they are doing and that they have our best interests in their hearts.
We Unitarian Universalists are not immune to the vicissitudes of human nature, that even though we may think of ourselves as forward, progressive people, we too struggle against the apathy of conformity, especially when thinking about military conflict that can mesmerize us with uncertainty.
In 1967, which was about three years after the Gulf of Tonkin incident that created the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that ushered in the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Unitarian Universalist Association, which was a new denomination of just 6 years at the time, commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to investigate all the members of our some 1,000 churches, chaired by Robert R. Tapp. The result was called the Report of the Committee of Goals commonly known as the Tapp Report. In it, hundreds of questions were asked of Unitarian Universalists about what they liked and did not like about church, what were their beliefs about God, Jesus, other religions, about marriage, preaching, etc. But among all those questions was this: Which one of the following statements best describes the policy you would prefer the United States to follow in Viet Nam? Five choices were given from increasing military pressure on the Communists, to continuation of the struggle, to encouraging initiatives of negotiation, to having our forces pull back to coastal enclaves, and finally to this: the United States should withdraw militarily from South Vietnam. That last one got 21.7% of the vote. Now admittedly, this was a year before the Tet Offensive and 3 years before the tragic events at Kent State University when 4 unarmed anti-war protestors were gunned down by young National Guard soldiers.
Nevertheless, this report does indicate to me that people were wary of leaving a war and also of distrusting our government. As I understand the answer to the Tapp Report, many Unitarian Universalists believed that President Johnson and his advisors had more access to information than the average citizen and knew better. Besides, there was a lot of sympathy for Johnson, who came into office after the tragic assassination of President Kennedy and as indicated earlier, he had done magnificent work in promoting human rights for so many Americans.
I imagine though that at that time, the answer among all Americans to that final statement would be less than 10%. Looking back, it is hard to imagine that the American people were so enthralled with war or so apathetic or fearful that they failed to speak the truth to power. But then I would argue – the same is true today.
For example, I was having a conversation with some friends about President Obama’s recent decision to send an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. I was the only one who questioned that decision. They all agreed that the president had good reasons for his decision because not to do so would create a disaster, that the Taliban would take over the Afghan government, that the terrorists would once again have a safe haven for their operations, etc. But most importantly, they agreed that our government had access to information that we ordinary citizens did not have and thus it knew better. But does knowledge alone give us the best guidance in these important matters of war and peace?
We can look to King’s ability to take an honest and accurate appraisal of the Vietnam War as a guide to our own troubled times of economic distress and war. In his Riverside speech, he demonstrated that he understood the American government’s history with Vietnam that had contributed to the hostility and anguish of the Vietnamese people.
He spoke of the Vietnamese people who proclaimed their own independence from both the Japanese and the French in 1945 creating a government based on our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Instead, our government supported the French as the re-conquered Vietnam once again as her own colony. That tragic decision not to support Vietnamese self-determination, eventually forced the Vietnamese to make alliance with a former enemy – China – which in time became Communist. For the Vietnamese, Communism only was only a means to an end, to the possibility of freedom from the French and land reform. But for the Americans, Communism meant something else altogether, something more sinister.
King spoke at length to explain of how our government’s lack of understanding of the Vietnamese desire for land and peace and our paranoia about Communism got us into that intractable and immoral war, a most unfortunate war. I invite you to read the Riverside speech to see for yourself King’s grasp of the history of Vietnam War and its meaning.
If you did read it now, I think you would come away with a sense that this man knows what he is talking about and that he has intelligence, wisdom and compassion. I think you would trust this man’s judgment and would note that, looking back, Martin Luther King, Jr. knew the truth. He had a grasp of the history that had lead to our disastrous decision to fight in Vietnam over the mistaken notion that we were fighting Communism, when the Vietnamese were fighting for self-determination.
Even so, King’s prescient and prophetic words brought criticism, even from the very people who supported him in his civil rights work. Especially gulling was an editorial in the New York Times of 7 April 1967 called “Dr. King’s Error.” The Times attacked King’s speech, saying that it was wrongheaded that he linked the misplaced resources on a futile war waged for wrong ends to the problems of racism in America. The editorialist suggests that King as one of the most respected leaders of the civil rights movement had a weighty obligation to direct that movement’s efforts in the most constructive and relevant way. In other words, the Times was suggesting that King would be advised to be silent or to put it bluntly, it seemed to say to King, “Shut up and mind your own business and stick to what you know – the civil rights movement.”
I doubt that today we could find any reporter or editorial writer at the New York Times who would take pride in that petty, dismissive editorial. Its analysis of King’s speech was about as deep as a child’s wading pool; in fact, one might call it stupid, especially since it did not consider King’s cogent analysis that clearly links militarism with racism and poverty in our nation. But more than that, the editorial failed even to acknowledge King’s moral claims of how the war destroyed Vietnamese lives, homeland and hope; of how the war gave justification to those young black men who promoted the use of violence at home to solve the problems of racism; and of how we had lost our way as a nation based in democratic principles of justice and freedom.
And yet there you have it. And the New York Times was not alone in criticizing King for this speech. Many, many people, including civil rights leaders and supporters, condemned it as well did the Black Power Movement for King’s emphasis of the need for non-violence. It seemed that Martin King was a lonely prophet in those days. I wonder how you would react if you read that editorial at the time? Would you trust the Times? Or would you read King’s words carefully and come to your own conclusion?
Our kind of government called a democracy depends on its citizens to be informed and to take action when needed to guide and indeed force our leaders to do the right thing. To do that, it is important that we know who to trust in giving us guidance and advice about these important matters.
At the very least, we should pay attention to people’s motivations, especially to their sincerity, because, at the very least, without sincerity, we cannot truly trust. I was moved in particular with King’s sincere words of how he wanted to “give a voice to the voiceless… and to understand the arguments of those who are called ‘enemy’.” He spoke of a brutalizing process to both the Vietnamese and to our young soldiers who through no fault of their own have been forced into an untenable situation. I was moved by his call for action, for our ending the Vietnam War. He said:
In my conversation with my friends about Afghanistan, I invited them to think anew, to ask questions about President Obama’s decision to increase troops there. What good will the extra troops do anyway? How will it improve the situation? Are they aware of our history with the Afghan people – of how our government surreptitiously supported the jihadists, called the mujahedeen, in their efforts to rid the country of Soviet denomination? And after the Soviets were defeated, did they know that our government abandoned war-torn Afghanistan which created a power vacuum filled by the Taliban, a criminal political and paramilitary group? Were they aware of how the Taliban after their initial defeat after our invasion in October of 2001 have come back to power precisely because of our military presence? Are they aware that polls indicate that most Afghans want us out of their county and that it is impossible to win a war of counterinsurgency without local support? Could we not find other means of helping the Afghan people then resorting to the use of military force once again? Finally, the war in Afghanistan had been justified by the brutal treatment of women at the hands of the Taliban even though our government did nothing to protest that. Our own American politicians voted down a resolution to protest the mistreatment of women by the Taliban. Does not the fact that women today in Afghanistan are still oppressed, having no rights concerning issues of being raped, of speaking out politically or even of little girls going to school speak to our failed policies in Afghanistan? Again I ask: How will more troops help that situation?
I am afraid that people are not willing to take the time to ask hard questions as King did in his Riverside speech concerning the Vietnam War and to consider the consequences of our government’s policies. His concerns should be our concerns today. We should pay attention to the connection of our weaken economy with the misplace resources on another intractable and immoral war. We should consider the suffering of the Afghans and also the Iraqi people. We should be concerned about the brutalizing effect on our young men and women who fight there. We should find other solutions to our political problems other than the use of violence.
It is easy to say that war is hell and a blunt instrument of foreign policy. Those words are too placid, too insipid, too detached from reality. A better way of speaking of war – when we wage war, when we invade a country – is to say it is as if we have brought a great earthquake to the land and the people, much like the earthquake that struck the poor Haitians this past week. If you have been watching the devastation and horror of the stench of piles of dead bodies and screaming mothers and fathers for lost children, of almost every building flattened, of the hundreds of thousands of homeless people desperately seeking food, shelter and medical attention, if you have been witnessing those images, and I know it is hard to do that, then you may have an understanding of what war is. War is not mere hell or a blunt instrument, it is an earthquake.
As to the question of who to trust in the matters as important as war and peace, I suggest that you look to leaders who will give you honest and accurate analysis, who will support the principles of our democracy based on the respect for individual rights, and will lead by example by treating opponents with respect and focus on solving our problems rather than taking partisan advantage over petty matters.
King reminds us of our responsibilities as citizens of listening carefully to our leaders of the various power elites of politics, business, military, and communications. Be careful off those who make appeals to our emotions, who pander to us and make ad hominen attacks. Remember that trust cannot be demanded but earned. And of all the leaders of my lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. stands out as one who has earned my respect and trust.
We Unitarian Universalists can take up Martin’s cause of promoting peace and justice. We can do so based on of affirming and promoting these principles of our liberal faith: justice, equity and compassion in human relations, the worth and dignity of each human being, and of seeking truth responsibility. Let us move beyond being perplexed and mesmerized by uncertainty. Let us not be afraid of asking the hard question and of courageously standing up for what we know to be moral and just speaking the language of compassion and reconciliation. Let us listen to our friend Martin as he beseeches us to move on.
In closing, I leave you with these words of our friend Dale Gibson reminding of the importance for us today to keep to King’s commitment to nonviolence:
I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. . . I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
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| Sermon Copyright © 2010 Harold W. Beu |
