"I ain’t gon' study war, no more!"

January 19, 2004 12:40 PM

"In Memory of Martin Luther King" [Flash.] The words are excerpted from King's 1967 speech, "Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."
posted by homunculus (10 comments total)

Tonight on PBS: Citizen King.
posted by homunculus at 12:51 PM on January 19, 2004

"I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love."

"I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will, all over America today. I call upon the young men of America who must make a choice today, to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late! The book may close… Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be. A sort of the policeman of the world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems like I can hear God saying to America, “you are too arrogant. If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power and…place it in the hands of a nation that does not even know my name....

Amen.
posted by anastasiav at 12:59 PM on January 19, 2004

I can hear God saying to America, “you are too arrogant. If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power and…place it in the hands of a nation that does not even know my name... With all respect to Rev. King, it has been thirty years since the Vietnam War, and the backbone of American power has not been broken. In fact, since Vietnam, America has grown more powerful than it could ever have imagined, until it stands supreme above all nations in the world. The Vietnam war was a slaughterfest, in which America killed hundreds of thousands of people -- an ten-year atrocity that makes our Iraqi adventure look like an exercise in enlightened diplomacy. If anyone were going to break America's back for evil and arrogance, that was the time to do it. Compared to LBJ and Nixon and their advisors, GWB and his people are humble, careful tactitions -- with a heck of a lot more right on their side.
posted by Faze at 1:10 PM on January 19, 2004

King is one of America's greatest heroes, even if you don't agree with all of his positions, or everything he had to say.
posted by cell divide at 1:34 PM on January 19, 2004

Faze: I think you're reading King's quote in too broad and literal a way. If you look specifically at Vietnam, he was absolutely right. We essentially fled Vietnam, no?

I'll leave the bit about Bush being humble and having "right" on his side alone, that's obviously just a flamefest waiting to happen.
posted by malphigian at 4:04 PM on January 19, 2004

place it in the hands of a nation that does not even know my name....

how do you say "God" in Chinese again?

, until it stands supreme above all nations in the world

well we can safely say that no Vietnamese person ever thought to blow up a radiological device or a small nuke or free an Ebola-type virus in an American city in the aftermath of the VietNam slaughter, yes.
how that couldn't happen in a not so distant future by the hands of some disgruntled Middle Eastern/Central Asian individual, no one can safely say. and if that ever happens, Zeus forbid, there pretty much goes the "stand supreme" thing. Empires usually collapse, as those mighty Romans learnt all too well.
posted by matteo at 4:17 PM on January 19, 2004

Empires usually always collapse...
posted by rushmc at 4:46 PM on January 19, 2004

Empires usually collapse, as those mighty Romans learnt all too well.

But first they learned that an overly militaristic republic can collapse and become an empire.
posted by homunculus at 5:07 PM on January 19, 2004

Faze and Malphigian I think you are wrong: America - and for that matter the rest of the western world - seems to me to be a nation with no backbone - following the whim of the moment but not sticking to the values that lie at the core of its being, where power is in the hands of people that don't know the name of God. They of course know how to use the name, but they seem to be oblivious as to it's true meaning. - I'm just saying maybe Martin Luther King prophecy wasn't that far of the mark.
posted by FidelDonson at 5:12 AM on January 20, 2004

Government Attacks on MLK Show Need to Protect Rights
posted by homunculus at 1:58 PM on January 20, 2004