Sunday, January 29, 2023

Ukraine is willing to use “their blood and our bullets” as many countries were in 1980s Reagan era says Oliver North. US attack on Communist China is next so "we" better hurry and ship weapons to Taiwan, he says-12/21/2022

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Those people in the 1980s” in Latin America, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and Afghanistan “were willing as the Ukrainian people are to use their blood and our bullets.”…Oliver North, 12/21/2022

12/21/2022, “Most of that [Ukraine war] money [$110 billion] is spent here in the United States: Oliver North,” Fox News video

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Excerpts from Fox News Oliver North interview:

12/21/22, Host Jason Chaffetz on Hannity show: “Here for reaction, retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Some are concerned–110 billion dollarsis that money well spent?”…

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North:

@:36, “...It’s money well spent. In my humble opinion, this is

like what Ronald Reagan did in the 80s. I have experience with that….

He believed in supporting freedom fighters. He did it in

Latin America. He did it in Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique.

He did it in Afghanistan. (@:53) Those people were willing as

the Ukrainian people are to use their blood and our bullets.

By the way, most of that

$110 billion total...is spent here in the United States.

It is provided to contractors and defense logisticians that

build the systems we are getting. Most spent here in America.

Good, hard working Americans have the jobs. And when you

look at that kind of investment.”...

(Text from interview continues at second Fox News video below).

12/21/22 Fox News Oliver North interview continuing from above,

We have to ensure they get the right message, no more

invasions: Oliver North,” Fox News, You Tube

Continuing from above @1:37, Oliver North;

People in Taiwan are going to need the same kinds of

weapons systems that we’re now providing to the

Ukrainians. And we’d better get hot at it because the

Communist Chinese aren’t backing down. They’re

watching very carefully what we’re doing. 

Host Jason Chaffetz: “...I wish we had more of a debate

about it.” (@4:18)

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Added: No more invasions,” US tells others? US does or causes

most of the “invading” via its unlimited access to US tax dollars.

Freeing the World to Death:” ...US has attempted to “free,” ie,

overthrow other governments at least 57 times between

World War II and 2019:

Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List,”

by William Blum

Freeing the World to Death.” 

(*Indicates successful ouster

of a government). [In 2002 case

of Venezuela,

Hugo Chavez was

out of power for only two days.]

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.”

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Added: “Whatever the sympathy we may have for the people

of the United States, their country is still the main predator

of humanity. We can in no circumstance claim to share their

“values”.”Manlio Dinucci, Italy, 2019

7/31/2019, The US model for “sovereign” government,”

Manlio Dinucci, Voltaire net

“Concerning “democratic sovereignty,” let’s not forget the series

of wars and coups d’État perpetrated by the United States,

from 1945 to the present day, in more than 30 countries."

US will consider Italy’s interests to be legitimate only

as long as Italy remains part of the NATO herd, dominated

by the United States,

follows them from war to war,

increases on their demand its military spending,

and leaves its territory at the disposition

of US forces and bases.”…

………………………………………..

Added: Continuous warfare” is the US Deep State’s

“only business product.” It “considers global conflict as

the price to pay for maintaining its largesse from the US taxpayer.”

11/7/2019, Philip Giraldi

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Added: Comment on Oliver North’s “candor:”

Amazing candor from Iran-Contra felon Ollie North:

Ukraine is just like Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America,

Africa and Afghanistan.

Most of the aid is a kickback to US weapons makers

and Beltway contractors. The proxy war is preparation

for a larger war

w/ China over Taiwan.

Max Blumenthal twitter, 12/29/2022

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My comment: Someone has to stop the US global killing machine.

The Russian Federation is the only one to take on the job so far.

I’m most grateful to them and wish them the best. Either the US must be broken up or the entire "US military" must be shut down. There's no third way.

 

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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Trump admin. simulated US nuclear battle response against Russia--for attack not on US, but on Europe--in Feb. 2020. Trump removed US from 3 nuclear agreements-Guardian, Feb. 2020, Jan. 2020, Aug. 2020

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Feb. 2020 article: In state of Nebraska, Trump admin. simulated a US nuclear response to an imaginary Russian attack–not on the US–but on Europe, just weeks after the US deployed a new low-yield submarine-launched warhead commissioned by Donald Trump [in 2018]."…Under Donald Trump, US bowed out of three nuclear agreements as of August 2020.

2/24/2020, US staged ‘limited’ nuclear battle against Russia in war game, UK Guardian, Julian Borger in Washington

“The Pentagon has briefed about the simulated exchange in a move that could signal

readiness to fight and win nuclear conflict.

The US conducted a military exercise [in Nebraska] last week [Feb. 2020] which simulated

a “limited” nuclear exchange with Russia, a senior Pentagon official has confirmed.

The war game is notable because of the defence department’s highly unusual decision to brief journalists about the details and because it embodied

the controversial notion that it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out world-ending conflict.

The USS Tennessee at sea.
Deployment of new US nuclear warhead on submarine a dangerous step, critics say

The exercise comes just weeks after the US deployed a new low-yield submarine-launched warhead

commissioned by Donald Trump [in 2018],

as a counter to Russian tactical weapons and intended to deter their use.

According to a transcript of a background briefing by senior Pentagon officials, the defence secretary, Mark Esper, took part in what was described as a “mini-exercise”

at US Strategic Command in Nebraska.

Esper played himself in the simulated crisis,

in which Russia launched

an attack on a US target in Europe.

“The scenario included a European contingency where you are conducting a war with Russia, and Russia decides to use a low-yield limited nuclear weapon

against a site on NATO territory,”

a senior official said. “And then you go through the conversation that you would have with the secretary of defense and then with the president, ultimately, to decide how to respond.”

The official said that “in the course of [the] exercise, we simulated responding with a nuclear weapon”,

but described it as a “limited response”.

The limited response could suggest

the use of a small number of nuclear weapons,

or an existing low-yield weapon, or the new W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched missile which was deployed in the Atlantic for the first time at the end of last year [2019]. The deployment only became public at the end of January.

At the same time as describing last week’s war game,

Pentagon officials defended the fielding of the W76-2.

“It’s a very reasonable response to what we saw was a Russian nuclear doctrine and nuclear capability that suggested to us that they might use nuclear weapons in a limited way,” a senior official said.

The briefing was first reported by National Defense, a trade magazine of the National Defense Industrial Association.

Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, pointed out that it was extremely rare for the Pentagon to give such detailed briefings about nuclear exercises and suggested it

could have been a marketing exercise for the new weapons

being added to the US arsenal.

“Remember, it’s only a few weeks ago that we had the official confirmation that this new low-yield warhead had been deployed,” Kristensen said.

“And we’re now moving into a new budget phase  

where they have to go to Congress

and try to justify the next new nuclear weapon

that has a low-yield capability which is a sea-launched cruise missile. So all of this has been

played up to serve that process.”

Advocates of the new US weapons say they represent a deterrent against Moscow believing it can use a tactical nuclear weapon without a US response, as Washington would have to choose between not responding, or dramatically escalating through the use of a much more powerful strategic nuclear warhead.

Arms control advocates are concerned that the leadership in both the US and Russia are developing a mindset in which their vast nuclear arsenals are not just the ultimate deterrent but weapons that

could be used to win “limited” conflicts.”

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Added: Jan. 2020: New nuclear submarine commissioned by Trump in 2018 began patrolling Atlantic Ocean waters in late 2019:

1/29/2020, Deployment of new US nuclear warhead on submarine a dangerous step, critics say, UK Guardian, Julian Borger

“First submarine to go on patrol armed with the W76-2 warhead makes a nuclear launch more likely, arm control advocates warn.”

The US has deployed its first low-yield Trident nuclear warhead on a submarine that is

currently patrolling the Atlantic Ocean,

it has been reported, in what arms control advocates warn is a dangerous step towards making a nuclear launch more likely.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the USS Tennessee – which

left port in [state of] Georgia at the end of last year [2019] is the first submarine to go on patrol armed with the W76-2 warhead,

commissioned by Donald Trump two years ago [2018].

It has an explosive yield of five kilotons, a third of the power of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima and considerably lower than the 90- and 455-kiloton warheads on other US submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The Trump administration’s nuclear posture review (NPR) in February 2018, portrays this warhead as a counter to a perceived Russian threat to use its own “tactical” nuclear weapons

to win a quick victory on the battlefield.

Advocates of W76-2 argued that the US had no effective deterrent against Russian tactical weapons because Moscow assumed Washington would not risk using the overwhelming power of its intercontinental ballistic missiles in response, for fear of escalating from a regional conflict to a civilian-destroying war.

Critics of the warhead say it accelerates a drift towards

thinking of nuclear weapons as

a means to fight and win wars,

rather than as purely a deterrent of last resort.

And the fielding of a tactical nuclear weapon, they warn,

gives US political and military leaders a dangerous new option

in confronting [perceived or alleged] adversaries other than Russia.

Trump’s NPR [Nuclear Posture Review] says the US could use nuclear weapons

in response to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks”,

including but not limited to “attacks on US, allied or partner civilian population or infrastructure”.

The US Navy and Strategic Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at FAS [Federation of American Scientists], said the report on the arming of the USS Tennessee is based on briefings from officials.

“We have had conversations with people inside, and they’ve been pretty clear that this has happened,” Kristensen said.

They see a need to talk about it to some extent, because if people don’t know it’s out there, then how can it deter?”

“This is a very rapid mind quick turnaround for a nuclear weapon, and that’s obviously because it was a fairly simple adjustment of an existing warhead,” he added. “They have argued that this is to deter Russia, but it

also has clear implications or potential use against other adversaries, not least North Korea and Iran.”

Kristensen said: “Certainly the low-yield collateral effect that would come from this weapon would be very beneficial to a military officer who was going to advise to the president whether we should cross the nuclear threshold.””

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Added: In Feb. 2020, Pentagon announces that UK will spend billions on new nuclear weapons:

2/22/2020, Pentagon reveals deal with Britain to replace Trident," UK Guardian, Jamie Doward

MPs dismayed after US defence officials leak news of nuclear weapons deal before parliament is told.” 
 
 
based on US technology. 
......

The decision was revealed by Pentagon officials who disclosed it before an official announcement has been made by the government.

The revelation has dismayed MPs and experts who question

why they have learned of the move –

which will cost the UK billions of pounds –

only after the decision has apparently been made.

It has also raised questions about the UK’s commitment to staunching nuclear proliferation and the country’s reliance on the US for a central plank of its defence strategy.

Earlier this month [Feb. 2020], Pentagon officials confirmed that its proposed W93 sea-launched warhead, the nuclear tip of the next generation of submarine-launched ballistic missiles,

would share technology with the UK’s next nuclear weapon,

implying that a decision had been taken between the two countries to work on the programme.

In public, the UK has not confirmed whether it intends to commission a new nuclear warhead. The Ministry of Defence’s annual update to parliament, published just before Christmas, says only: “Work also continues to develop the evidence to support a government decision when replacing the warhead.”

But last week [Feb. 2020] Admiral Charles Richard, commander of the US strategic command, told the Senate defence committee that there was a requirement for a new warhead, which would be called the W93 or Mk7. Richard said: “This effort will also support

a parallel replacement warhead programme in the United Kingdom,

whose nuclear deterrent plays an absolutely vital role in NATO’s overall defence posture.”

Ed Davey, acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “It is totally unacceptable that the government seems to have given the green light to the development of

new nuclear weapon technologies

with zero consultation and zero scrutiny.

Britain under Johnson increasingly looks like putty in Trump’s hands. That Britain’s major defence

decisions are being debated in the United States, but not in the UK,

is a scandal.

Under Johnson, it seems that where Trump leads, we must follow.”

Alan Shaffer, Pentagon deputy under-secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, also made reference to the new UK programme in a briefing session at the annual nuclear deterrence summit, in Alexandria, Virginia. “I think it’s wonderful that the UK is working on a new warhead at the same time, and I think we will have discussions and be able to share technologies,” Shaffer said.

David Cullen, director of pressure group the Nuclear Information Service, said:

“The UK’s reliance on US knowledge and assistance for their nuclear weapons programme means

they will find it almost impossible to diverge from any development path the US decides to take.

“We are legally bound

to take steps towards disarmament under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,

but this would take us in the opposite direction.”

It is understood that the US had agreed with the UK not to make any announcement while parliament was in recess. However, US defence officials were apparently oblivious to the agreement and confirmed the programme’s existence –

to the embarrassment of the UK government.

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the development of the new warhead

posed significant geopolitical problems.

“Britain and the US have come a long away from being leaders in reducing the role of nuclear weapons and contemplating the possible road toward potential disarmament

to re-embracing nuclear weapons for the long haul.

They are obviously not alone in this, with Russia, China and France doing their own work. So, overall, this is

a serious challenge for the international non-proliferation regime,” he said.

Tom Plant, director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the independent security thinktank, Rusi, said the

lack of debate

about the new weapon was a concern.

“There’s been a presumption from those in opposition and analysts like myself that it should come to parliament in some way, like the 2016 vote on Trident. I suspect that the MoD’s position is that

they don’t want it to.

What the programme doesn’t need from their perspective is lots of scrutiny. But if there’s going to be a decision it should absolutely come to parliament.”

The MoD said: “As previously stated in the 2015 defence review, we can confirm that we are working towards replacing the warhead. We have a strong defence relationship with the US and will continue to remain compatible with the US Trident missile. An announcement about the UK’s replacement warhead programme will be made in due course.”

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Added: August 1, 2020: “Nuclear hawks are…pushing to lock in spending [while Trump is in office] in case there is a change of administration….Under Donald Trump, the US has now left three nuclear agreements.…The total cost of the US nuclear weapons modernisation programme is expected to be far in excess of $1trillion.”

8/1/2020, In April 2020 letter, UK lobbies US to support controversial new nuclear warheads,” UK Guardian, Julian Borger

[April 2020] Letter from defence secretary seen by Guardian draws Britain into debate pitting Trump administration against many Democrats.”

The UK has been lobbying the US Congress in support of a controversial new warhead for Trident missiles, claiming it is critical for

“the future of NATO as a nuclear alliance”.

A letter from Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, seen by the Guardian, urged Congress to support initial spending on the warhead, the W93.

The letter, sent in April [2020] but not previously reported, draws the UK into a US political debate, pitting the Trump administration against many Democrats and arms control groups over whether the the $14bn W93 programme is necessary. The US navy already has two warheads to choose from for its submarine-launched Trident missiles.

The close cooperation on the W93 casts further doubt on the genuine independence of the UK deterrent – parliament first heard about it when US officials accidentally disclosed Britain’s involvement in February – and the commitment of both countries to disarmament.

The UK is also supporting the administration’s efforts to speed up work on the warhead and its surprise $53m request for initial weapon design work in the 2021 budget,

two years ahead of the previous schedule.

Sceptics believe the rush is intended to lock in funding before the election. A Biden administration would be likely to review or even cancel the W93 programme.

“These are challenging times, but

it is crucial that we demonstrate transatlantic unity and solidarity

in this difficult period,” Wallace told members of the House and Senate armed services committees.

“Congressional funding in [2021] for the W93 program will ensure that we continue to deepen the unique nuclear relationship between our two countries, enabling the United Kingdom to provide safe and assured

continuous-at-sea deterrence for decades to come.”

The British intervention comes as the initial funding for the warhead hangs in the balance. It was approved by the House and Senate armed services committees but blocked at least temporarily, by a House energy and water subcommittee last month.

Congressional staffers said they could not recall such a direct UK intervention in a US debate on nuclear weapons.

“We’ve never had a letter of this sort before, so it was a little bit surprising that this is the issue that they chose to weigh in on,” a committee aide said.

The UK insists its Trident nuclear deterrent is autonomous, but the two countries share the same missiles and coordinate work on warheads.

The current UK Trident warhead, the Holbrook, is very similar to the W76 warhead, one of two the US navy uses in its own Trident II missiles.

The US and UK versions of the W93 are also expected to resemble each other closely. Both countries will use the same new MK7 aeroshell, the cone around the warhead that allows it to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, which will cost another several hundred million dollars.

Little has been disclosed about the W93, but it is thought to be based on

a design that was tested during the cold war

but not made part of the US stockpile at the time. It will potentially be the first new warhead design in the US stockpile since the cold war and is expected to be of considerably higher yield than

the current W76, which is already six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 75 years ago next week.

The demand for funding for the W93 is particularly controversial in the US as the W76 and a higher-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warhead, the W88,

have already been subject to multibillion-dollar upgrades.

“This is excess on top of excess,” Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said. “We already have two SBLM warheads. The W76 just went through a major life extension programme and is slated to be good into the early 2040s, and the W88 is going through a major alteration.

“The US can continue to assist the UK’s arsenal

without rushing the development of an unnecessary, at least $14bn new-design, third SLBM warhead,” Reif added.

The total cost of the US nuclear weapons modernisation programme is expected to be

far in excess of $1tn….

Under Donald Trump, the US has now left three nuclear agreements

and his administration is reluctant to extend the last major arms control deal with Russia, the 2010 New Start treaty, which is due to expire in February.

The bonfire of nuclear accords, combined with the huge amounts spent on weapons like the W93, are a threat to the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the fundamental bargain by which countries without nuclear arms pledged not to acquire them

on condition the recognised nuclear powers (the US, UK, France, Russia and China) took steps to disarm, under article six of the treaty.

“When I look at something like the W93, it’s not, in and of itself, a violation of article six,” said Daniel Joyner, a University of Alabama law professor specializing in nuclear treaties. “It’s just a further data point to evidence, the current non-compliance of the US and UK with article six.”

In his [April 2020] letter to the congressional committees, Wallace wrote: “Your support to the W93 program in this budget cycle is critical to the success of our replacement warhead programme and to the long-term viability of the UK’s nuclear deterrent

and therefore, the future of NATO as a nuclear alliance.”

Alexandra Bell, a former state department official and now senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said the US-UK special relationship 

had shown greater solidarity in promoting new weapons  

than in arms control.

“The UK is noticeably missing when it comes to emphatic support for New Start extension, but yet at the same time it feels comfortable directly telling members of Congress what they should do about our own modernization plans,” Bell said. “I think that’s weird.”

Asked about the purpose of Wallace’s letter, a UK defense ministry spokesman said: “The UK’s existing warhead is being replaced in order to respond to future threats and guarantee our security. We have a strong defence relationship with the US and will work closely with our ally to ensure our warhead remains compatible with the US’s Trident missile.”

According to official figures, the US W76 warhead is viable until 2045 at least – and the UK version is expected to last until the late 2030’s, so there is no urgent technical need for replacement.

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said nuclear weapons hawks at the Pentagon, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Los Alamos National Laboratory were

pushing to lock in spending in case there is a change of administration.

“They would like to get this program endorsed by Congress this year, and they’re very close to it,” Mello said.

Once it is a programme of record, it will take more for a future administration to knock it out.”…

The US and Russia, which is also upgrading its arsenal and developing new weapons, together account for more than 90% of all the nuclear warheads on the planet, and both countries are putting increasing emphasis on them in their rhetoric and defence postures.”…

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Comment: The US isn’t a country, it’s a killing machine that exists only because US taxpayers are enslaved to it.

 

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Dr. King bravely opposed mass murdering US government, said US was “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Complicit media trashed his speech, called it “demagogic slander,” said he’d “diminished his usefulness to his cause.” Problem solved: One year later Dr. King was dead.

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In speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, [You Tube audio] at Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King said that US government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and that Vietnam war was an enemy of the poor” in America....Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King haddiminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”…Undaunted, on April 15, 1967 Dr. King led an anti-war march of 125,000 in NY City from Central Park to the United Nations.

Image: 4/15/1967, Dr. King leads anti-war march to the UN

April 4, 1967, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” By Rev. Martin Luther King, informationclearinghouse.info

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. 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.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth,

men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.

Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?

Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask?

And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.

Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

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.

The Importance of Vietnam

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 I, 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.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” 

and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, 

I have this further answer.

In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,

we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.”

We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

“O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!”

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.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of

responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget 

that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission — 

a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.”

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am 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? What then can I say to the “Vietcong” or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

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.

The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945

after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom,

we refused to recognize them.

Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people

were not “ready” for independence,

and we again fell victim to the deadly

Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.

With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence.

For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war

we [US taxpayers] were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs.

Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will.

Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

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 modern 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 watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. 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 wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. 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. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force –– the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

What liberators?

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.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak 

for those who have been designated as our enemies. 

What of the National Liberation Front — that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them — the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality 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.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel 

as a temporary measure at Geneva.

After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate,

these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been

the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops,

and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, 

how the president claimed that none existed 

when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched

as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces,

and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression

as it drops thousands of bombs on

a poor weak nation more than

eight thousand miles away from its shores.

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 Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. 

I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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 in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. 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.

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. 

It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

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.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. 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.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

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.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

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.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from

the immense profits of overseas investment.

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. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. 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. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war:

“This way of settling differences is not just.”

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of

filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of

sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged,

cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense

than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities,

so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

There is nothing to keep us from molding

a recalcitrant status quo

with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.

These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.

We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that

our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice.

We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against

our failure to make democracy real

and follow through

on the revolutions we initiated.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become

an absolute necessity for the survival of man.

When 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. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. 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. As Arnold Toynbee says : “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

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. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today;

nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

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 callling 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.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

“Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.””

……………………………………………………

Added:

Image: April 15, 1967, crowd of 125,000 gathered in NY City Central Park to follow Dr. King to the UN to protest US war in Vietnam. Universal Newsreels

By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War,

and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic.

In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967

a year to the day before he was murdered King called the United States

the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” 

Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968.

 

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