Editor,
We do a disservice to Dr. King when we commemorate his life and ignore the prophetic message he left behind. Our too-often sanitized remembrance focuses on his quest for civil rights. What is being whitewashed from Dr. King’s legacy is his message about war and growing militarism.
Dr. King insisted that no significant social problem — wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife — could be resolved while we remain “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift.” His words ring true, given our pressing social needs, crumbling infrastructure, and a bloated military budget (more than education, health and human services, and housing and urban development combined). Indeed, he might feel that we have suffered the “spiritual death” he warned against.
During the Vietnam War, Dr. King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Now we are the world’s largest producer, importer and exporter of arms — and we are waging a perpetual “war on terrorism” with troops, drones and obscene amounts of money contributing to violent conflicts around the globe.
According to a former Iraq veteran and analyst, our ‘war’ is not working. Instead, it is creating generations of violent extremists at a terrible human and economic cost. Matt Southworth’s shared experience gave meaning to Dr. King’s words, “Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction … The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken… .”
How would Dr. King view today’s world? Read his words. He’d no doubt see our military leaders and defense contractors shaping policy to ensure profitable wars instead of peace and stability. He’d be morally outraged at the torture, loss of life, millions of displaced refugees, and the impacts of warfare training here at home. He’d remind us, “These are the times for real choices and not false ones … when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly.”
RICK ABRAHAM
Greenbank
