Beyond Vietnam

Today, April 4, marks 58 years of Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" sermon delivered at Riverside Church in New York City.

In the historical annals as one of the best 100 speeches in modern American history, the sermon broke the silence on the war, gave clarity to what it really was about, and called for specific measures to get out of it.

MLK started out with explaining why he decided to break the silence on the Vietnam war, accused that this might take away his focus of the broader Civil Rights movement:

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

He then went deep (the entire speech is almost an hour and can be accessed and even listened to, with the original recording of MLK's voice, here) into the seven major reasons for how and why the war became the center of his "moral vision":

1. The "adventure" in Vietnam took resources away from investing in domestic "Poverty Program," which would have benefited both black and white populations;
2. Even worse, the war was sending the poor black communities' men "to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population."
3. MLK couldn't keep silent about the war anymore because he was preaching non-violence for social change and could no longer ignore the violence of the US government: "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."
4. Racism, militarism, and poverty are linked in time to Jim Crow laws and slavery. MLK's agenda of saving "the soul of America" was based on "the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear."
5. As the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, which as a humble man he thought he'd been given on credit more than on merit, MLK felt that he needed to work for peace harder and speak out louder for the voiceless.
6. MLK had a commitment to Jesus Christ and his teachings of peace and love, and equality for all people without oppression.
7. As God requires a vocation of sonship and brotherhood, "We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls 'enemy,' for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

Further, MLK provides a detailed account of Vietnam's struggle for independence, the US involvement in the war and wonders if the US in this particular conflict was on the right side of the revolution. He then suggests specific measures to stop the war and right the America' path and healing of its soul.

It is indeed a remarkable speech. Even though it did break the silence about the war, it didn't change the course and degree of the US government involvement in it. Also remarkable is the fact that MLK was assassinated exactly one year after he delivered this sermon, on April 4, 1968.

The US was so entangled in the war that it took another major break of silence about the war to change the public's opinion about it: Life magazine's Dec.5, 1969 expose of the My Lai massacre. Its graphic pictures and detailed account of atrocities committed by the US soldiers against the civilian Vietnamese villagers finally triggered a shift in public opinion that the US government could no longer ignore. The entire story can be read here:

Why am I connecting these two events, MLK's speech and Life magazine story? - Because yesterday, our campus hosted one of the living witnesses of the Vietnam war, Army medic Mike Hastie, who told our students about them in a public lecture.

Additionally, he gave us his own list of ten things to consider about the Vietnam war. I am citing them here without any change, in Mr.Hastie's wording and order:

The United States Government was responsible for over 20 million bomb craters in Viet Nam.

The United States Government dropped 400,000 tons of Napalm in Viet Nam.

The United States Government fired 15 billion pounds of artillery shells in Viet Nam.

The United States Government sprayed more than 70 million liters of poisonous herbicides, most notably, Agent Orange, in Viet Nam.

The amount of ammunition fired per soldier was 26 greater in Viet Nam than during World War II.

The United States Government dropped more than two million tons of cluster bombs on Laos during the American War in Viet Nam, making Laos the most heavily bombed country in history per capita.

The United States Government had at its disposal more killing power, destructive force, and advanced technology than any military in the history of the world. This new advanced technology ushered in a new era of Scientific Slaughter.

The United States military, the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, committed mass murder on the daily basis against one of the poorest countries in the world. US terrorism was responsible for killing 3.8 million Vietnamese people, the vast majority civilians.

Since the end of World War II, the United States Government has bombed over 30 countries. The US currently has over 750 military bases around the world. What so few Americans truly understand, is that the United States Government is the single most powerful World Empire in human history.

Whenever the truth threatens one's core belief system, there is an urgent need to deny its reality.

The last point explains Mike Hastie's commitment to continue talking about the Vietnam War and bear witness to it for the future generations.

His presentation yesterday made me think that despite the fact that wars are now much more sophisticated, the rules of engagement with the civilian populations have changed, people still die in wars every day. Currently, there's over 100 military conflicts, large and small, including two major wars in Europe and Middle East and regional conflicts in various parts of the world. Is humanity doomed to fight itself into oblivion?