{"id":7448,"date":"2011-01-17T18:58:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T01:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=7448"},"modified":"2011-01-17T18:58:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T01:58:31","slug":"remember-the-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2011\/01\/17\/remember-the-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"“Remember the Dream”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sigh.<\/a><\/p>\n

At an event commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday, the general counsel of the Pentagon \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Jeh Johnson \u00e2\u20ac\u201c said that if King were alive today he would support the war in Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n

The remarks, reported by American Forces Press Service,<\/strong> are an unusual claim considering King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lifetime commitment of fighting against what King referred to in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech,<\/strong> the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism: \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6racial injustice, poverty, and war.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Said King: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Johnson said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation’s military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pentagon counsel noted that in King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve Been to the Mountaintop\u00e2\u20ac\u009d speech \u00e2\u20ac\u201c his final one \u00e2\u20ac\u201c delivered the day before his assassination at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn,,<\/strong> King told the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan who helped a man who had been beaten by thieves, after a priest and a Levite walked past him.<\/em><\/p>\n

King noted that in the story of the Good Samaritan, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the first question that the Levite asked was, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/em><\/p>\n

Rev. King, there to support a strike of sanitation workers, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that’s the question before you tonight. Not, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Not, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The question is not, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 The question is, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That’s the question.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Johnson in his speech compared US troops to the Samaritan.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In 2011, I draw the parallel to our own servicemen and women, deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their homes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Johnson said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Those in today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people.\u00c2\u00a0 Every day our servicemen and women practice that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdangerous unselfishness\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Dr. King preached on April 3, 1968.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Johnson is not without his knowledge of King \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he graduated from King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., and attended school with Martin Luther King III.He acknowledged that Johnson acknowledged that King called violence \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Johnson acknowledged that King made an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153impassioned plea against the war in Vietnam\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153from that point on he questioned the whole rationale for war in general.\u00c2\u00a0 From the gospel song \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDown by the Riverside,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Dr. King repeated the line: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI Ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Gonna Study War No More.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Which makes Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s claim all the more unusual.<\/em><\/p>\n

But the claim still seems unusual.<\/em><\/p>\n

King in 1967 called for the US<\/strong> to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and said the US should \u00e2\u20ac\u0153declare a unilateral cease-fire\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153realistically 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 any future Vietnam government.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

And in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Holbrooke said he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153venture(d) to suggest to all of you and all who hear and may eventually read these words, that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations. It is, after all, nation-states which make war, which have produced the weapons which threaten the survival of mankind, and which are both genocidal and suicidal in character\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.It is not enough to say “We must not wage war.” It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

I think this is what you can call “Pentagon Spin”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sigh. At an event commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday, the general counsel of the Pentagon \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Jeh Johnson \u00e2\u20ac\u201c said that if King were alive today he would support the war in Afghanistan. The remarks, reported by American Forces Press Service, are an unusual claim considering King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lifetime commitment of fighting against what King […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7449,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448\/revisions\/7449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}