1-15-07, 9:35 am

Dr. King’s views on militarism and war are especially important now when permanent war seems to be the only rhetoric coming from our national leaders. We can look into his words and deeds for guidance to recovering a saner and peaceful approach to equalizing our relationships with each other, other countries and groups of people around the world. The future of our world and the possibility of justice here in our home depend on it.

From the beginning of his involvement, Dr. King argued for and practiced a lifestyle of non-violence in achieving the goals of the civil rights struggle. In a speech at Berkeley in 1957, King stated that the purpose of non-violent resistance was not simply to make a point or win an argument (or struggle), but to reconcile with the other and create the promise of real friendship and unity. He put it like this:

'The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of non-violence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.'

Two years later, Dr. King expressed his general position against war:

'I have unequivocally declared my hatred for this most colossal of all evils and I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality.'

Even further, Dr. King insisted that war could not even perform the act of a 'negative good' or defense, especially in the days of nuclear weapons and inter-continental ballistic missiles. While not embracing a blanket pacifism, Dr. King thought that finding alternatives and developing international relations of cooperation are key to human survival:

'If we assume that mankind has the right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction.'

And in perhaps his most famous statement against the war in Vietnam in 1967, Dr. King denounced the code of silence that had legitimated that war and the cost in human life. He praised the courage of those who had spoken out in dissent and recognized the difficulty of opposing the policies of one’s government. He saw strong connections between the war in Vietnam and the declining focus on the proposed 'war on poverty' that had been begun by then-President Johnson:

'It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black and white – through the poverty program,' King wrote. 'Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.'

Dr. King reasoned: how could we support a war whose sponsors claimed was meant to establish democracy when it put working-class Black and Latino youth on the frontlines, while at home job discrimination, police brutality, segregation, high unemployment, poverty and so much more were the norm. He pointed to Detroit. He said that two men, one white and one Black, could fight the war side by side, but in the city of Detroit never cross paths.

These social issues reverberate today in our own cities where under-development and neglect in city centers disproportionately affects still segregated communities of color. The picture Dr. King painted has changed little. Yet, our national leaders claim to be capable of telling people in other countries how they ought to live their lives at the barrel end of a rifle.

He further recognized the fact that most of the men (and today, women) and a disproportionate number of those fighting, dying or being hurt in the war were the poor, they were Black or Latino.

Dr. King could not square his policy of non-violence and the encouragement that he gave to other African Americans and all people generally to resist oppression with non-violence 'without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.'

'Somehow this madness must cease,' Dr. King pleaded. 'We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid to waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.'

He pointed out that the ideals for which we claimed to fight were not the real motives or intentions of the leaders who had started the war, and that was becoming increasingly obvious to the rest of the world:

'If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.'

Dr. King called for a revolution in values from being 'thing-oriented' to people-oriented. To consider human and social needs above profit and wealth, too often the real motive for war. In one of his last essays published after his death, Dr. King provided a powerful image of the damage we cause ourselves with war:

'The bombs in Vietnam also explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.'

One such bomb exploded in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast in August of 2005. More than 1,800 people were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced, many thousands of homes destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi.

In an era when the U.S. government systematically pursues war based on lies, perpetuates it to increase the profits of companies like Halliburton and ExxonMobil, and risks the lives of so many thousands of people to save the reputation of a repudiated and discredited leader like President Bush, Dr. King’s words resonate ever more deeply.

--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at