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| Pentagon official: Martin Luther King would support Iraq, Afghan wars | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 16 2011, 01:17 PM (247 Views) | |
| shure | Jan 16 2011, 01:17 PM Post #1 |
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Pentagon official: Martin Luther King would support Iraq, Afghan wars By Sahil Kapur Friday, January 14th 2011  An Obama administration official said that nonviolent icon Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would "understand" and "recognize" the need for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if he were alive today. In a speech commemorating the late hero days before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday, the Department of Defense's general counsel Jeh C. Johnson imputed highly questionable views to the civil rights leader. "I 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," Johnson said. Johnson claimed US service members are helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that Dr. King spoke out in favor of acts of kindness. "I draw the parallel to our own servicemen and women deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their homes," Johnson said, adding that the "dangerous unselfishness" of the troops would make Dr. King proud. The claim sparked controversy as critics were quick to note that Dr. King was an ardent anti-war activist who spoke out against military interventions. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill called it "[o]ne of the most despicable attempts at revisionist use of Martin Luther King Jr. I've ever seen." Salon's Justin Elliott remarked that Dr. King's "political philosophy, as outlined in his landmark 1967 speech against the Vietnam war, strongly suggests that he would be an opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, for that matter, the secret wars in Yemen and Pakistan." In the speech, Dr. King lamented "the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores." He called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and said: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." The Pentagon release goes on to note that Johnson, an African-American, is a graduate of Morehouse College, Dr. King's alma mater, where he attended school with Dr. King's son. source: Raw Story |
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| shure | Jan 16 2011, 01:18 PM Post #2 |
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B.S.  
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| shure | Jan 17 2011, 06:09 PM Post #3 |
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Comments on the pentagon spokesperson claiming MLK would support
"There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn’t so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so." –Soren Kierkegaard "We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because the lie is more comfortable." –Alexander Solzhenitsyn Friends, I don't know if Ministry of Truth and its Newspeak Department in Nineteen Eight-Four would have had the chutzpah and insolence to try to cleverly demean, diminish and transvalue Martin Luther King, Jr.'s truth and legacy the way the Uncle Tom—who today shamelessly serves the big plantation owners' of the White House he is permitted to live in, and the chain gang of Stepin Fetchits he brought along with him, are doing. See the attached Pentagon press release. The daily avalanche of calculated lies that pour forth from the executive branch and the Congress falsifying everything from the number of unemployed people in the U.S. to the daily murderous U.S. activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is of primary interests to me. This is the simply the way all major governments work at all times—no exceptions ever. Ceaseless deception and violence is their stock in trade. What does primarily concern me is the clever denigration of the truth that Jesus proclaimed by word and deed, specifically the truth that the Way of God is the Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled to the end—amidst all the frailties, fragilities and seemly unkempt vicissitudes of a human existence within the mystery of iniquity—to embody, teach and proclaim this truth of Jesus. To alter without the slightest piece of evidence the perception of who Martin Luther King, Jr. was spiritually, what he believed and what he would chose today is as clear an effort to re-write history as those school districts are doing who are minimizing his presence in elementary and secondary school history books. And, by immediate extension it is to make Martin Luther King's Lord, God, Savior and Model, Jesus, look like a Galilean peasant bumpkin, and utopian idealist, so impractical and unrealistic that any teenager could see that you can't live His way in the real world where nations rage against nations and the making of instruments to kill people is the biggest business of the planet. So let's set the record straight on Martin Luther King, Jr. and by extension on Jesus: In recent months several people have said to me: Martin, since violence is the new cry, isn’t there a danger you will lose touch with the people and be out of step with the times if you don’t change your views on nonviolence? My answer is always the same…Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. That is what I have found in nonviolence.” “I have decided I am going to do battle for my philosophy. You ought to believe something in life, believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up with it until the end of your days. I can’t believe that God wants us to hate. I am tired of violence.” “What kind of nation is it that applauds nonviolence whenever Negroes face white people in the streets of the United States but applauds violence and burning and death when these same Negroes are sent to the fields of Vietnam. I am committed to nonviolence absolutely. I am just not going to kill anybody, whether it’s in Vietnam or here. I plan to stand by nonviolence…(because) only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead toward community where people live together without fear. Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past…If we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn humanity away from the long and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new person that the world needs is the nonviolent person…A dark, desperate, sin-sick world waits for this new kind of person, this new kind of power. Now read the words (attached) of Jeh C. Johnson, General Consul for the Department of Defense and a 1979 graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, the same college Martin Luther King, Jr. graduated from in 1948. Mr. Johnson spoke at the Pentagon’s Commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. just prior to this year’s annual MLK, Jr. holiday. His speech was released world-wide through the Pentagon press office immediately afterwards. Every first year law student is taught that there is no position that cannot be logically presented or defended. The rest of his or her three years in law school is spent learning how to do that well. I remember in the first year of law school a student by the name of Bill Long said in class to the contracts’ professor, a lawyer by the name of Hart, “But what you are saying is contrary to the truth of Natural Law.” Hart responded, “I don’t give a damn about the truth Natural Law nor do your clients. They’re paying you to get them their money or to keep them out of prison. They are not paying you to be an advocate for the truth of Natural Law.” Judging from this speech, Jeh C. Johnson learned his lessons well at Columbia Law School. He gave the Pentagon what they were paying him for—and he certainly could not have given a damn about the truth of Martin Luther King’s life for which he gave his life; nor for the truth of Jesus' Way which He lived unto His own murder. The mind is below truth, not above it, and it is bound not to descant on it, but to venerate it. Truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts. -Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman Charlie |
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