An Echo Forty Years Old

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King made a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City that was heralded as historic by some and something of a crime by others, but either way, much of what Dr. King said that day sounds eerily familiar in light of the economic, military and political morass the United States finds itself in today.

One parallel between the observations Dr. King made forty years ago and today is how little we understood or even considered what the Vietnam War meant for the millions of Vietnamese in the North and South who were just trying to live their lives. America’s focus was on our troops, our strategic interests and on propping up the US-installed government in Saigon.

Fast forward forty years to the American Occupation of Iraq. The plight of ordinary Iraqis is almost completely ignored by the American news media, as is any comprehensive coverage or explanation of Iraqi society, culture and history; most Americans couldn’t explain the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite if their home and hearth depended on it. It’s next to impossible for Americans to understand what it must feel like to live in an occupied country, to see foreign soldiers on street corners, to hear fighter jets and helicopters thundering overhead day and night, and to be reminded, every day, that your destiny rests in foreign hands rather than your own.

Forty years ago Dr. King quoted a Buddhist leader who wrote: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instincts. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.”

Same in Iraq today. The folly of our invasion and occupation has created enmity in the hearts of Iraqis that will last at least a generation if not longer. We could “surge” forty or sixty thousand troops into Iraq and not come close to eradicating the hatred Iraqis feel for America and Americans. Dr. King feared for American troops in Vietnam, feared that we had placed them in a situation that was not only brutal but cynical: “…for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”

I wonder how Dr. King would feel if he could see how many steps backwards America has taken in the forty years since he spoke at the Riverside Church. The militarism he feared is still alive and well; the economic and social injustice he spoke and marched against is as strong as ever; the racial intolerance he dedicated his life to fighting is alive and well. The words Dr. King spoke echo down the years, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ruined streets of the 9th Ward in New Orleans, through small-town churches and big-city synagogues, through the halls of government and the plush offices of corporate titans; the words echo and fall on ears gone deaf.