[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 27 (Thursday, February 13, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E210-E211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E210]]
 BEYOND VIETNAM LIES IRAQ: SHARED SACRIFICE IN THE WORDS OF DR. MARTIN 
                              LUTHER KING

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 12, 2003

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that this year as we 
celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday and Black History Month, 
that Dr. Martin Luther King be remembered not only for his involvement 
in the civil rights movement, but also for his quest to achieve peace 
and justice for all by speaking out against war. On April 4, 1967, Dr. 
Martin Luther King gave a speech entitled ``Beyond Vietnam.'' In this 
speech, Dr. King spoke out against the Vietnam war, and more 
importantly, spoke of the need to wage peace, not war.
  In the weeks that President Bush and his administration have been 
leading this country to war against Iraq, I have found myself going 
through many of the same motions of a man who opposed a war more than 
thirty years ago. I began by voting against the Congressional 
Resolution that gave President Bush the authority to carry out this 
war, and have most recently pushed for Americans to more carefully 
consider the costs of going to war without just cause by introducing a 
bill that would reinstate the draft. My push to reinstate the draft was 
meant to first, show my opposition to a unilateral preemptive strike 
against Iraq and second, to insure that if America does go to war, that 
an equitable representation of all classes of Americans are making the 
sacrifice for our great country.
  In being reintroduced to Dr. King's speech, I found that, while he 
was attempting to end a war, his goals in giving the ``Beyond Vietnam'' 
speech were similar to my own, in that he wanted the persons being 
called upon to fight the war to realize that the war they were fighting 
was serving the needs of persons that were not interested in serving 
their needs. As have I, Dr. King recognized that the poor were 
disproportionately shouldering the burden of a war. Dr. King described 
the war as a ``cruel manipulation of the poor'' and an ``enemy of the 
poor'' that was ``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.''
  The recognition that the sacrifices being made for this country were 
(and continue to) not be shared was only one of a number of 
realizations Dr. King made in regards to the Vietnam War. As many of 
the insights he made then continue to be relevant in our journey down 
the warpath to Iraq, I invite you to read these excerpts from a speech 
delivered on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned 
at Riverside Church in New York City and consider the words of Dr. 
Martin Luther King.

                Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

       I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because 
     my conscience leaves me no other choice. [. . .] The recent 
     statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of 
     my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read 
     its opening lines: ``A time comes when silence is betrayal.'' 
     That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. [. . .] I 
     come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my 
     beloved nation. [. . .] Tonight, however, I wish not to speak 
     with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, 
     who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a 
     conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
       Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not 
     surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing 
     Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the 
     outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between 
     the war in Vietnam and the struggle 1, and others, have been 
     waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment 
     in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of 
     hope for the poor--both black and white--through the poverty 
     program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. 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.
       Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place 
     when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more 
     than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was 
     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. We were taking the black young 
     men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 
     eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast 
     Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East 
     Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony 
     of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill 
     and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat 
     them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal 
     solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize 
     that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I 
     could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of 
     the poor.
       My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, 
     for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the 
     North over the last three years--especially the last three 
     summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and 
     angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and 
     rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer 
     them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction 
     that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent 
     action. But they asked--and rightly so--what about Vietnam? 
     They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of 
     violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it 
     wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that 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. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of 
     this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands 
     trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. [. . .]
       Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has 
     any concern for the integrity and life of America today can 
     ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally 
     poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never 
     be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the 
     world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined 
     that America will be are led down the path of protest and 
     dissent, working for the health of our land. [. . .]
       And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within 
     myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my 
     mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak 
     now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in 
     Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under 
     the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I 
     think of them too because it is clear to me that there will 
     be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to 
     know them and hear their broken cries. They must see 
     Americans as strange liberators. [. . .]
       After the French were defeated it looked as if independence 
     and land reform would come again through the Geneva 
     agreements. But instead there came the United States, 
     determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided 
     nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of 
     the most vicious modem dictators--our chosen man, Premier 
     Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly 
     routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist 
     landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with 
     the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided 
     over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of 
     U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that 
     Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they 
     may have been happy, but the long line of military 
     dictatorships seemed to offer no real change--especially 
     in terms of their need for land and peace.
       The only change came from America as we increased our troop 
     commitments in support of governments which were singularly 
     corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the 
     people read our leaflets and received regular promises of 
     peace and democracy--and land reform. Now they languish under 
     our bombs and consider us--not their fellow Vietnamese--the 
     real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them 
     off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where 
     minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move 
     or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go--primarily women and 
     children and the aged. [. . .] They wander into the 
     hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American 
     firepower for one ``Vietcong''-inflicted injury. So far we 
     may have killed a million of them--mostly children. They see 
     the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. 
     They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, 
     soliciting for their mothers.
       What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the 
     landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many 
     words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test 
     our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out 
     new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of 
     Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we 
     claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
       We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: 
     the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and 
     their crops. [. . .] Now there is little left to build on--
     save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations 
     remaining will be found at our military bases and in the 
     concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified 
     hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our 
     new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for 
     such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions 
     they cannot raise. These too are our brothers. [. . .] They 
     question our political goals and they deny the reality

[[Page E211]]

     of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their 
     questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning 
     to build on political myth again and then shore it up with 
     the power of new violence?
       Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and 
     nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of 
     view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of 
     ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic 
     weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may 
     learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who 
     are called the opposition. [. . .]
       At this point I should make it clear that while I have 
     tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the 
     voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those 
     who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our 
     troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what 
     we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the 
     brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face 
     each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the 
     process of death, for they must know after a short period 
     there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are 
     really involved. Before long they must know that their 
     government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, 
     and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the 
     side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for 
     the poor. [. . .]
       This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of 
     Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words: ``Each day 
     the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the 
     Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian 
     instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into 
     becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who 
     calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military 
     victory, do not realize that in the process they are 
     incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image 
     of America will never again be the image of revolution, 
     freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and 
     militarism.''
       If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in 
     the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in 
     Vietnam. [. . .] 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 from the beginning of our adventure 
     in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the 
     Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be 
     ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
       [. . .] I would like to suggest five concrete things that 
     our government should do immediately to begin the long and 
     difficult process of extricating ourselves from this 
     nightmarish conflict: (1) End all bombing in North and South 
     Vietnam; (2) Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that 
     such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation; (3) 
     Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in 
     Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand 
     and our interference in Laos; (4) Realistically accept the 
     fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial 
     support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any 
     meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government; 
     (5) Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from 
     Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. [. . .]
       Meanwhile 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 
     in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words 
     by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. [. . 
     .]
       The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady 
     within the American spirit, and 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. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but 
     not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
       In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it 
     seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a 
     world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen 
     emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the 
     presence of U.S. military ``advisors'' in Venezuela. This 
     need to maintain social stability for our investments 
     accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American 
     forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are 
     being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American 
     napalm and green beret forces have already been active 
     against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that 
     the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. 
     Five years ago he said, ``Those who make peaceful revolution 
     impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.'' [. . .]
       I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of 
     the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical 
     revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift 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.
       A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question 
     the fairness and justice of many of our past and present 
     policies. [. . .] A true revolution of values will soon look 
     uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With 
     righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see 
     individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of 
     money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the 
     profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the 
     countries, and say: ``This is not just.'' It will look at our 
     alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: 
     ``This is not just.'' The Western arrogance of feeling that 
     it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from 
     them is not just. [. . .]
       We must move past indecision to action. We must find new 
     ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the 
     developing world--a world that borders on our doors. 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. 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? The choice is ours, and though we 
     might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial 
     moment of human history.

                          ____________________