The '67 MLK Speech We Should Heed The Most

King delivered his speech on Vietnam exactly a year before
his assassination. (photo by John C. Goodwin)

In the last issue of TIME magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, in a piece called "King's Other Legacy", makes the case that MLK's 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech has even more implications for today than does his better known "I Have A Dream" one delivered four years earlier.

In 1967, Nguyen reminds us, the Vietnam war was at its peak, and American forces were using more firepower (much of it against civilians) than the U.S. deployed in all of World War II. King rightfully called it a "war against the poor" that young black men were compelled to wage, along with their fellow draftees, to "guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."

Here's an excerpt from Nguyen's article:

"King's prophecy connects the war in Vietnam with our forever wars today, spread across multiple countries and continents, waged without end from global military bases numbering around 800. Some of the strategy for our forever war comes directly from lessons the American military learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombing; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees, censorship of gruesome images from the battlefronts, and encouraging the reverence of soldiers.

"You can draw a direct line from the mantra of 'thank you for your service' and 'support our troops' to American civilian regret about not having supported American troops during the war in Vietnam. This sentimental hero worship serves civilians as much as the military. If our soldiers can be absolved of any unjust taint, then the public who support them can be absolved, too."

Read the entire TIME article here: http://time.com/5505453/martin-luther-king-beyond-vietnam/