Martin Luther King Jr. the Lost Speech - The Casualties of the Vietnam War

Sir. star ow mr. McWilliams and other distinguished guests on the platform, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how delighted I am to be here this afternoon and to have the privilege of being part of this important conference and at the outset I want to express my deep personal sentiments. Thanks to my friend Robert Vaughn for these kind and kind words of introduction. It's always good to be in California and renew old friendships and camaraderie and I'm happy to share the platform with friends I've known forever. here with us today and has been a great supporter of our work in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

You know he's a great fundraiser and one day we were having a fundraiser at Burt Lancaster's house and when he started ma

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the appeal, my associate Valve Abernathy said you sound like a good Baptist preacher, so every Every time I talk to you about money you better keep your pocket very close, yes, but we have to be here with all these friends and, of course, whenever. I come to California, especially when I fly from New York or Chicago. I'm always happy to land because the flight over the Rocky Mountains is usually very turbulent and after a turbulent flight I'm always happy to land.

I don't want to give anyone here the impression that I have no faith in God and I have simply had more experience with him on the ground, let me briefly say how happy I am to be here under the auspices of The Nation Magazine through your journalistic integrity and her genuine liberalism and suddenly this magazine has claimed an enduring niche in the annals of our nation's journalistic history and I know that those of us who are readers and subscribers of the Nation magazine are deeply indebted to it for everything what he has done to make the debate on the vital questions of our day and of my age a reality.

I think we can all say that I am sure the nation would appreciate the applause you are about to give it, ha ha, certainly, in these days of emotional tension when the world's problems are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, no there is a greater need than sober thin

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, a debate at a health fair, creative dissent and enlightened discussion and I think that is why this particular symposium is so important and why this afternoon I would like to speak to you frankly and I hope that sincerely about our current involvement in Vietnam and have chosen the victims of the war in Vietnam as a topic to speak about.

Certainly we are all aware of the terrible physical victims of this war that we see. them in our living rooms and all those tragic dimensions on television screens and we read about them on our subway and bus trips and in the newspaper to tell the tale, we see the rice fields of a small Asian country being trampled at will and burned at our whim. heartbroken mothers with crying babies clutched tightly in their arms as they watch their small huts go up in flames, we see the fields and valleys of battle painted with the blood of humanity, we see the broken bodies lying prostrate in countless fields, the most tragic of all is In the casualty list among children it is estimated that around 1 million Vietnamese children have been victims of this brutal war in which children are incinerated with napalm in which melted American soldiers die in increasing numbers while other American soldiers According to press reports, they fight uncontrollably. hate shoots the wounded enemy as he lies on the ground here is a wall that mutilates the conscience these

casualties

are enough to make all men rise up in righteous indignation and oppose the very nature of this evil war, but the

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physics of the war and Vietnam. they are not the only ones the catastrophe the casualties of principles and values ​​are equally disastrous and harmful if the casualty is a principle and does not produce the physical casualties will continue to increase one of the first casualties of the Vietnam War was a letter from the United Nations in al take armed action against Vietnam are the Viet Cong and North Vietnam, the United States clearly violated the Charter of the United Nations which states in Chapter 1, Article 2, that all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity our political independence from any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations and in Chapter 7 establishes that the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, violation of the peace or act of aggression and thus make recommendations or decide what measures should be taken to maintain and restore international peace and security.

It is very obvious that our government blatantly violated its obligation under the United Nations Charter to present to the Security Council its accusation of major aggression against North Vietnam. Instead, we unilaterally launched an all-out war against North Vietnam. By ending the war on Asian soil, we have in the process undermined the purpose of the United Nations and caused its effectiveness in many points to be too absolute. We have also placed our nation in the position of being morally and politically isolated, even America's long-standing allies have done so. We absolutely refuse to join our government in this ugly war.

As Americans and lovers of democracy, we should reflect carefully on the consequences of our nation's deteriorating moral status in the world. The second casualty of the Vietnam War is a principle of self-determination when entering a war. That is little more than an internal civil war. The United States has ended up supporting a new form of colonialism cloaked in certain subtleties of complexity. Whether we realize it or not, our participation in the Vietnam War is an ominous expression of our lack of sympathy for the oppressed, our paranoid anti-communism, our inability to feel the pain and anguish of the dispossessed reveals our willingness to continue participating in neocolonialist adventures a brief look at the background of the history of this war reveals with brutal clarity the ugliness of our politics the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after the occupation combined French and Japanese and before the communist revolution in China were led by the now well-known Ho Chi Minh even though they cited the American Declaration of Independence and their own document. of freedom we refused to recognize it and instead decided to support France in its reconquest of its farming colony.

President Truman felt that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence and we once again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere. For so long with that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government that sought self-determination and the government that had been established not by China, for whom the Vietnamese people have no great love, but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists during the nine years after 1945. We denied the people of Vietnam Vietnam the right to independence for nine years We vigorously supported the French in their failed attempt to recolonize Vietnam before the end of the war We found that 80% of the French withdrew Even before the French were defeated at De and Being deceived, they began to despair at their reckless action, but we did not.

We encouraged them with our enormous financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had

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the wheel. During this period, United States government officials began brainwashing the American public. Foster Dulles assiduously sought to demonstrate that Indochina was essential to our security against the Chinese communist danger; When a negotiated solution to the war was reached in 1954 through the Geneva Agreement, it was done against our will after we had done everything possible to sabotage war planning. the Geneva act that we finally refused to sign shortly after we installed it was released diem we supported him in his betrayal of Geneva struck a chord and his refusal to hold the promise of the 1956 elections we watched with approval as he engaged in a ruthless and bloody persecution Of all the opposition forces, when their nefarious actions finally led to the formation of the National Liberation Front, the American public was deceived into believing that the civil rebellion was being waged by puppets from Hanoi, wrote Douglas Pike, and the horrible Americans watched them helplessly tear apart the fabric of Vietnamese society more effectively than the communists had ever been able to;

It was the most efficient act of his entire career. Since DM's death we have actively supported a dozen other military dictatorships, all in the name of the fight for freedom, when it became clear that these regimes could not defeat the Vietcong we began to steadily increase our forces by calling in their military advisors instead of soldiers today we are fighting a total war not declared by Congress we have more than 300,000 American soldiers fighting in that late and unhappy country American planes are bombing the territory of another country and we are committing atrocities equal to those perpetrated by the Vietcong this is the third largest war in American history all of this reveals that we are in a morally and politically unsustainable position we are standing before the world satiated by our own barbarism We are immersed in a war that seeks to turn back the clock of history and perpetuate colonialism white.

The greatest irony and tragedy of all this is that our nation, which initiated much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world, is now cast in the mold of being an anti-revolutionary archenemy a third victim of the Vietnam War is a great society this confusing war has wreaked havoc on our internal destinies despite feeble protests to the contrary the promises of the Great Society have been torn down on the battlefields of Vietnam the The continuation of this expanded war now has internal welfare programs that make white people and poor blacks be the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home, while the anti-poverty program is cautiously launched, closely monitored and evaluated for immediate results.

Billions are being spent liberally for this reckless war the recently revealed erroneous estimate of the war budget amounts to ten billion dollars for a single year this error alone is more than five times the amount committed to anti-poverty programs the security we profess to seek in the foreign adventures we will make we lose in our decaying cities the bombs in Vietnam explode at home destroy the hopes and possibilities of a decent America we reverse investments and give the Armed Forces a budget against poverty generals could be forgiven if they left the battlefield in disgust poverty poverty urban problems and social progress are generally ignored when weapons of war become a national obsession when it is not our security that is at stake but questionable commitments and lazy with reactionary regimes values ​​disintegrate into silly and adolescent slogans it is estimated that we spend three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars for each enemy we kill while we spend on the so-called warm poverty in the United States, only about fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor , we have escalated the war in Vietnam and eased the skirmish against poverty.

It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives we could transform if we stopped killing at this moment in history. It is irrefutable that our global prestige is pathetically fragile. Our war policy arouses pronounced contempt and aversion practically everywhere, even when some national governments for economic reasons and diplomatic interests do not condemn us. Their people to a surprising extent have made it clear that they do not share the official policy. We are isolated in our false values. In a world that demands social and economic justice we must undergo a vigorous realignment of our national priorities. A fourth casualty of the war in Vietnam is the humility of our nation through firm determination, scientific and technological progress, and dazzling achievements.

The United States has become the richest and most powerful nation in the world. We have built machines that think and instruments appear in the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. We build gigantic bridges to cross the Anik zeig seeds and buildings to kiss the skies through our planes and spaceships. We have a dwarf distance in time in Cadenas and through our submarines we have penetrated the ocean depths this year. Our gross national product will reach an astonishing figure. Of seven hundred and eighty billion dollars all this is an astonishing picture of our great power, but honesty forces me to admit that our power has often made us arrogant as a nation, we feel that our money can do anythingthing, with arrogance we feel that we have it all.

To teach other nations and nothing to learn from them, we often arrogantly feel that we have some divine messianic mission to watch over the entire world, we are not going to allow young nations to go through the same growing pains, turbulences and revolutions that characterized our history. again in our claim that we have a sacred mission to protect the people from totalitarian rule while making little use of our power to end the evils of South Africa and Rhodesia and while in fact supporting dictatorships with guns and money under the guise of fighting against communism. We are arrogant to profess to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations without putting our own house in order.

Many of our senators and congressmen happily vote to allocate billions of dollars to the war in Vietnam. These same senators and congressmen vote loudly. against a fair housing bill to make it possible for a black Vietnam veteran to buy a decent home we are black soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but very little protection for their families from beatings and murders in our own south we are willing to make blacks 100 percent of a citizen in war, but reduce it to 50 percent of a citizen on American soil of all the good things in life, the black has about half as much as the whites, of the bad, he has twice as many as whites, therefore half of all blacks live in poor conditions. housing and has half the income of whites when we analyze the negative life experiences that blacks have. a double proportion there are twice as many unemployed the infant mortality rate among blacks is double that of whites there was the twice as many blacks in combat in Vietnam in early 1967 and twice as many killed in combat in proportion to their numbers in the White population, all of this reveals that our nation has not yet used its vast resources of power to end the long night of poverty, racism and man's inhumanity towards man.

Greater power means greater danger if it is not accompanied by a concomitant growth of the soul. Genuine power is the correct use of force if the force of our nation is not used responsibly and with moderation, we will be following Lord Acton's saying: power that tends to corrupt and power that corrupts and absolute power that absolutely corrupts our arrogance ericana may be our undoing, it may bring down the curtain on our national drama, ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. In these turbulent days, we are challenged to use our power to hasten the day when every valley will be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the crooked places will be made straight. and the difficult places claim that a fifth victim of the war in Vietnam is the principle of dissent, an ugly repressive sentiment to silence the PC curves that represent the defenders of immediate negotiation under the terms of the Geneva agreement and the people who They call for an end to bombing in the north as quasi traitors Aveeno enemies of our soldiers and institutions freedom of

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and the privilege to dissent and discuss our rights are being blocked by bombers in Vietnam and those who stand for peace are so vilified that It is time to consider where we are going and whether freedom of expression has not become one of the main victims of the war.

Patel, the free

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men, rationalize based on a more compelling American tradition that prohibits criticizing the government when the nation has been at war for over a century and we wanted a declared state of war. with Mexico, a first-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln stood in the halls of Congress and bravely denounced that war. Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had not heard of this tradition, he was not willing to respect it, now Thoreau and Emerson and many other philosophers had. those who shaped our democratic principles nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the ruthless effort to silence dissidents.

Power is one of the most persistent and greatest. What we face is that everyone talks about peace as a goal; However, you don't have to be very sophisticated to discern that, while everyone talks about peace, peace has practically become no one's business among the powers. The call plays the role of those who sing the good news of peace and your ears will be amazed at the sounds of response. The heads of all nations are a clarion calling for peace, but these determiners of destiny are accompanied by a band and a brigade of national members. Choristers eat sterile drawn swords instead of olive branches.

The scenes of history are filled with songs and choruses of the conquerors of yesteryear who came killing in search of peace. The can of Alexander Ganges. Julius Caesar will be the main one in Napoleon, which Akane is similar in the search for a peaceful world. a world modeled after those selfish conceptions of an ideal existence, each seeking a peaceful world that embodied those selfish dreams even within the lifetime of most of us, another megalomaniac crossed the stage of history, sent his troops to across Europe, wreaking havoc and the Holocaust. in its weight, that is a grave irony in the fact that Hitler could emerge following the neck idli aggressive expansion spyro that he revealed and mine came and did it all in the name of peace, so when I see on this day the leaders of the Nations speaking similarly about peace as I prepare for war I pause horribly and watch today our country intervene and what is basically a civil war destroying with napalm hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese children and adults and send home half a mentally and physically mutilated man when I see the recalcitrant unwillingness of our governments to create the atmosphere for a negotiated solution to this horrible conflict by stopping the bombing in the north and agreeing to lead the Vietcong and all this in the name of persecuting the goal of peace.

I tremble for our world. I do so not only from the memory of the nightmares unleashed on the walls of yesterday, but also from the terrible realization of the possible nuclear destructiveness of today and the even more reprehensible prospects of tomorrow, the past is prophetic and affirms loudly that the walls are poor chisels to carve peaceful mornings, one day we must come. To see that peace is not simply the distant goal we seek but a means by which we reach that goal we must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means how much longer must we continue to play?

How much longer must we continue playing deadly war games before we pay attention? the clearest pleas of the countless dead and maimed through the walls, why couldn't we grow up long ago and take off the blindfolds, show ourselves new directions, put our hands on the helm and set sail towards the distant destination, the port city of peace? President John F. Kennedy once said that humanity must end war a war will end humanity how true is this wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete there may have been a time when that war served as a negative good-bye that prevented the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war could serve as a negative good.

If we assume that life is worth living and that man has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to avoid it. War in an age when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve paths of death through the stratosphere. No nation can claim victory in war. The so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil and spiritual disillusionment. A world war, God forbid, will leave only smoldering ashes as mute testimony of a human race whose father led inexorably to final death, so that if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into a hellish place such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the things we must face and that we can achieve in matters of disarmament and peace, but I believe it is a fact that we will not have the will, the courage and the insight to address such issues. Unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a spiritual and mental re-evaluation, a change of focus that allows us to see that the things that seem most real and powerful are now unreal and under the death sentence, we need to make a supreme decision . Effort to generate the willingness, indeed, the enthusiasm to enter the new world that is now possible.

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say that we should not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not only on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace, which is a fascinating little story preserved for us in Greek literature about Ulysses and the Sirens. Mermaids had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could sing. They did not resist the course towards that island, many ships were attracted to the rocks and the men forgot the duty and honor of the home as they threw themselves into the sea to be embraced by the arms that dragged them to death.

Ulysses decided not to be attracted by the sirens. He decided first to tie himself tightly to the mast of his ship and to his cruel things that plugged their ears with wax, but finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves, they embarked the obvious beautiful singer whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the sirens and obvious. she sang who bothered to listen to the sirens, so we must set our vision not only on the negative expulsion of the wall but on the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that that piece represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discordant chords of In the war, we must somehow transform the dynamics of the global power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive competition: the creative genius of the honest man with the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world.

We must move from the arms race to a race for peace, if we have the will and determination to mount that peace offensive, we will open the doors of hope until now hermetically closed and bring new light to the dark chambers of pessimism. Let me finally say that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak against it not with anger but with anxiety and sadness in my heart and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country be a moral example to the world. I speak against this war because I am disappointed in America;

There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love. I am disappointed in our inability to positively and directly address the three evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism. We are currently moving down a dead end path. that can lead to a national disaster Jesus once told the parable of a young man who left his home and wandered to a faraway country where, adventure after adventure and sensation after sensation, he searched for life but never found it, only found frustration and bewilderment. from his father's house, the closer he got to the house of despair, the more he did what he liked, the less he liked what he did after the boy had wasted all the famine developed on the land and ended up searching for food in a watering hole. pigs but the story does not end there, it goes on to say that in this state of disappointment, blinding frustration and longing, the boy came to his senses and said: I will get up and go to my father and say to him father, I have sinned against heaven and before you .

The prodigal son was not himself when he left his father's house when he dreamed that pleasure was the end of life only when he decided to return home and be a son again did he really come to his senses the parable ends with the report of a child He who returns home finds a loving father waiting for him without outstretched arms and with a heart full of indescribable joy. This is an analogy for what America faces today, like all human analogies. It's imperfect, but it suggests some parallels worth considering. The United States has strayed into a distant country. of racism and militarism the home that many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically its pillows were solidly grounded in the ideas of our Judeo-Christian heritage all men are made in the image of God all men are brothers all men are created equal every man He is heir to a legacy of dignity and worth, each man has rights that are not conferred nor do they come from the state, they are given by God of one blood.

God made all men to dwell in the face of his what a wonderful foundation for any home,What a glorious and healthy place to live, but America is immediate and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment, it has left hearts soaked in guilt and minds distorted by irrationality, it has expelled wisdom from its sacred throne, this long and insensitive stay in the country far from racism and militarism has brought a moral and spiritual famine to the nation. It is time for all people of conscience to call on America to return to its true home of brotherhood and peaceful pursuits.

We cannot remain silent as our nation engages in one of the cruelest and senseless wars in history, America must continue to have a company of creative dissidents during these days of human suffering. We need them because the thunder of their fearless voices will be the only sound louder than the bomb explosions and the clamor of their war hysteria. Those of us who love peace must organize ourselves effectively as war hawks while spreading war propaganda. We must spread the propaganda of peace. We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach to the core. of our nation are shaken, we must work ceaselessly to lift this nation we love to a higher destiny, to a new level of compassion, to more, not to a nobler expression of humanity. "The less I have tried to be honest today, to be honest is to face the truth to be honest is to realize that the supreme measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands in moments of challenge, in moments of controversy, however unpleasant and inconvenient the truth may be.

I believe we must expose it and face it if we want to achieve a better quality of life in the United States Just the other day, the distinguished American historian Henry Steele Commons. in all Senate engagements and I quote Judge Holmes used to say that the first lesson a judge had to learn was that he was not God, we do 10 perhaps more than other nations, the transfer of our wars to the Crusades, our. current participation in Vietnam becomes more and more a moral mole, I have the feeling that we do not have the material, intellectual or moral resources to be at the same time an American power, a European power and an Asian power.

I agree with the Mr. Cummings and I would suggest that it is another kind of power that the United States should be: it is a moral power, a power harnessed in the service of peace and human beings, not an inhuman power unleashed against defenseless people. Everyone knows that the United States is a great military power we do not need to be diligent in trying to prove it now we must show the world our moral power which is an element of urgency in our redirection of American power we now face the fact that tomorrow is today we face the fierce urgency of now in this conundrum of life in history there is such a thing as being too late procrastination remains the thief of time life often leaves us standing BAM naked and despondent with a missed opportunity the tide In the affairs of men it does not remain flooded herbs we can cry desperately for time to stop in its passage, but time is inflexible in every plea, rushes over the bleached bones and credits, the remains of numerous civilizations, ravaged by the pathetic words, too late, there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance, our negligence. moving the finger write and having writing move forward we still have a choice today non-violent coexistence a violent correlation history will record the choice we make it is not yet too late to make the right decision we will decide to become a moral power we will be able to transform the jangling discords of this world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood if we make the wise decision we will be able to transform our pending national and cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace this will be a glorious day since only we will do it The day will speed up and all the children of God , black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Easterners and Westerners, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty.

They are free at last