Monday, May 30, 2005
An amazing American
Today, for the first time in decades, I heard a man speak
He appropriately defined Bushco's invasion of Iraq as what Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson called the supreme crime against humanity. When a congressman walked out of his talk, he said "As the congressman walks out, I want to say that I am not impressed by the US claim of self-defense against Iraq." His memories of the terrible things he witnessed 60 years ago brought him to tears as newly as if they were before him today.
I have not heard such a compelling voice since that of Martin Luther King calling us to be drum majors for justice.
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Wow! He sounds impressive, Charles.
Imagine if, instead of bombing Iraq and Afghanistan to rubble and then wondering why the natives hate us, we'd taken the same amount of money and manpower committment and turned it into a combined Nuremberg/Marshall Plan for the Middle East. Of course, that might not have guaranteed us the military bases BushCo wanted. But then again, we wouldn't have needed them.
As for the "drum major" speech... yes. The one he did, right before he died. Famous in the black community, but almost unknown outside of it -- all because MLK Jr. had spent the last few years of his life fighting to get us out of Vietnam. (He was one of the first prominent civic leaders, if not the first, to take such a stand. As a result, the details of that period of his life, from roughly 1964 onward, have been erased from most histories, especially school textbooks.)
Imagine if, instead of bombing Iraq and Afghanistan to rubble and then wondering why the natives hate us, we'd taken the same amount of money and manpower committment and turned it into a combined Nuremberg/Marshall Plan for the Middle East. Of course, that might not have guaranteed us the military bases BushCo wanted. But then again, we wouldn't have needed them.
As for the "drum major" speech... yes. The one he did, right before he died. Famous in the black community, but almost unknown outside of it -- all because MLK Jr. had spent the last few years of his life fighting to get us out of Vietnam. (He was one of the first prominent civic leaders, if not the first, to take such a stand. As a result, the details of that period of his life, from roughly 1964 onward, have been erased from most histories, especially school textbooks.)
The drum major speech was delivered February 4th, 1968 at Ebenezer Baptist Church. King was murdered on April 4th of that year.
This is the line we need to hear now: God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.
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This is the line we need to hear now: God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.
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