Beyond Iraq

By Stephen Rohde
     
      Forty years ago today, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a powerful and inspiring speech at Riverside Church in New York City, which has become known as "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."
      One year to the day before he would be assassinated, King declared that he could no longer confine his energies to the domestic struggle for civil rights. Instead, his deep religious faith compelled him to denounce the war in Vietnam both because it was wrong and because of what it was doing to America and the rest of the world. He declared: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
      Today, our country is engaged in another immoral foreign war that must be denounced with the same courage and conviction that King exhibited. Today, silence about the war in Iraq is betrayal.
      King acknowledged the complexity of the issues the nation faced, and he rejoiced that religious leaders had begun to raise the voice of conscience by speaking out against the war. Today, we must once again find that "new spirit" and lead our country "beyond the darkness" of the war in Iraq to the light of peace.
      Early in his speech, King identified the connection between the cost of war abroad and the unmet needs of the people at home. Recalling the hopes and "new beginnings" of the poverty program, King saw it "broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war." King saw that poor families were "sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population."
      An advocate of nonviolent resistance, he said that he could never again raise his 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."
      King grounded his opposition to the war in "the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ." He marveled at those who asked him why he was speaking against the war. "Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men - for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?"
      Today, the players and the geography have changed but the message is the same. Poor people of color are sacrificing their lives in a far-off war, while local communities forgo health care, housing, transportation and education, and we are no less challenged to love our neighbors, regardless of their immigration status, country of origin, economic status, race or creed.
      In words as achingly true today as 40 years ago, King spoke of his deep concern for the young soldiers dying in an immoral war. His words were filled with anguish and outrage. "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor. ... I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption [abroad]. I speak as a citizen of the world. ... I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
      In words we so yearn to hear from our leaders today, King declared: "The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong ... [and] we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war."
      Speaking directly to religious communities, King urged that "we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways. ... We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible."
      But Dr. King refused to leave it there. He called the war in Vietnam "a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit" and predicted that "if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy." Tragically, America has not heeded these warnings. In the intervening 40 years, our government has launched military adventures all over the world.
      King called for "a radical revolution of values ... from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
      As if he could hear President Bush boasting about "spreading democracy in Iraq," King warned that the "Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just." He asserted: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
      He said that "[w]hen I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality."
      Recalling the first Epistle of St. John, King challenged his listeners: "We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate."
      With a passion as compelling today as it was 40 years ago, King declared: "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late."
      Today, as then, King urges us to "move past indecision to action" and find "new ways to speak for peace and justice" for if "we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."
      "Now let us begin," Dr. King concluded. "Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? [W]e must choose in this crucial moment of human history."
      So we, on April 4, 2007, must ask ourselves: Can we do any less in the face of the monstrous war in Iraq? Are the odds too great to end this war now? Is it too hard to speak truth to loyal Americans who have yet to see that their government has lied to them? Shall we just send our regrets to the families here and around the world who will lose their children today and tomorrow, next week and next month, next year, while we remain silent and inert?
     
      Stephen Rohde is a constitutional lawyer with the Los Angeles firm of Rohde & Victoroff. He is a founder of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (www.icujp.org), which on April 15 will hold a major event protesting the war in Iraq.