Glenn Greenwald, “MLK’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever,” The Guardian, 21 January 2013

The civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I’ve noted before on this holiday, how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating his life (just as his economic views are). By King’s own description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in Vietnam but generally, was central – indispensable – to his worldview and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is remembered.

King argued for the centrality of his anti-militarism advocacy most eloquently on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City – exactly one year before the day he was murdered. That extraordinary speech was devoted to answering his critics who had been complaining that his anti-war activism was distracting from his civil rights work (“Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask?”). King, citing seven independent reasons, was adamant that ending US militarism and imperialism was not merely a moral imperative in its own right, but a prerequisite to achieving any meaningful reforms in American domestic life.

In that speech, King called the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today“, as well as the leading exponent of “the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long” (is there any surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia: “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” He insisted that no significant social problem – wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife – could be resolved while the US remains “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift” – a recipe, he said, for certain “spiritual death”. For that reason, he argued, “it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.” That’s because:

“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

Working against US imperialism was, he said, “the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.” For King, opposing US violence in the world was not optional but obligatory: “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy . . . .” The entire speech is indescribably compelling and its applicability to contemporary US behavior obvious. I urge everyone who hasn’t already done so to take the time to read it. …

Never once do they stop and wonder: why are there so many people in the world who want to attack the US? Never once do they do what King so bravely and rather subversively urged: “the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence” is it “helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves“. King explained: “from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.” King thus urged the nation to “understand the arguments of those who are called enemy.”

Adhering to King’s prescription – “understanding the arguments of those who are called enemy” – would clearly reveal the obvious “alternative” to Obama’s global assassination program: namely, ceasing the endless violence that is what drives so many people to want to bring violence to the US in return, combined with prosecutions of the handful of people who possess both the intent and capability to attack the US.  …

But a citizenry whose “soul becomes totally poisoned” by endless war is incapable of considering nonviolence as an alternative. It loses its capacity for empathy (to understand what motivates others’ actions), for self-assessment (to acknowledge the role one’s own actions play in perpetuating this violence), for rationality (to consider whether those being killed are actually implacable foes), and for communion (to see “the enemy” as anything more than dehumanized Others who must be extinguished). Thus do we hear – in the face of endless reports of dead children and innocent adults from US violence – this morally stunted defense: I can’t think of an alternative other than boots on the ground. That’s the mantra of a degraded citizenry trained to recite from a script of endless war. …