Martin Luther King Jr. Warned That the Poor Pay for War With Their Lives

Such an excellent article!! Dr. King's passionate criticism of the military industrial complex and exposure of deadly American militarism and its ties to extreme economic, racial, and social injustice was clear. We have yet to learn these lessons. That said, there is revolution underway for radical changes and which demand that we evolve NOW to become a peaceful and caring nation and people. May we all be informed by Martin Luther King, Jr. and be inspired to carry on his legacy as radical nonviolent revolutionaries on the front lines in the struggle for a peaceful, just, and caring nation and world. We are the ones we have been waiting for! — Molly

Sheyda Shadkhoo called her husband from Flight 752 and said she was scared. The U.S. had killed a top Iranian general. Iran vowed revenge. Hassan told her, “Not to worry. Nothing’s going to happen.” As the plane took off from Tehran, two surface-to-air missiles were fired from a nearby military base. Sheyda, along with 175 others, were killed.

We have “guided missiles and misguided men,” Martin Luther King Jr. said 53 years ago in his speech, “The Three Evils of Society.” King had begun to use principles of nonviolence to analyze not just racism but poverty and militarism. War, he said, robs society of the funds to uplift the poor. War kills the working-class people who fight it. It employs the rhetoric of freedom to conceal mass death.

The Trump administration is in a deadly military tit-for-tat with Iran. The U.S. has 200,000 troops deployed across the world, particularly in the Persian Gulf, Asia and Africa. It brushes close to Chinese islands and navy ships in the South China Sea. U.S. drone missiles rain on peasants. War is one accident or one bad decision away. We need to recognize that the “patriotism” of the post-9/11 era is complicity in global carnage — and revisit King’s vision of peace.

Seven Days In January

Are we going to war? A nervous energy filled New York. On the subways and at bodegas, one could hear the fear of a terrorist attack. In the seven days between Trump greenlighting the drone assassination of Iran’s Major General Qassim Suleimani and Iran retaliating by firing 22 missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq, the world held its breath, terrified of a full-on conflict. When the smoke cleared, no American military personnel had been killed. War was narrowly avoided, but for how long?  

Fifty-eight years ago, King watched an eerily similar high-stakes crisis when, for 13 days in 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. edged close to nuclear war. Back-channel deals between President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev made a face-saving détente possible. Afterward, King wrote in a letter to Kennedy, “…you have utilized some of the elements of non-violent creativity in international conflict, despite the presence of latent force… it recognizes that every opponent somewhere has a receptive syndrome which may lead to reconciliation.” The praise may be misplaced since it was Kennedy’s hawkish foreign policy that sparked the crisis. Nevertheless, peace, specifically Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha or “appeal to truth,” was the core of King’s theology since 1950, and deepened during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and his trip to India in 1959.

King’s critique of U.S. militarism culminated in his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam” at Riverside Church. He had three main points. The first was that militarism robs the nation of resources it could use to alleviate poverty. Second, the burden of fighting war falls on the poor and working class, who are betrayed by the very nation whose uniforms they wear. Finally, the promises to safeguard freedom, trumpeted by our presidents, are veils thrown over the narrow American interests that leave vast destruction and death in its wake.

The War Machine

King was assassinated in 1968. The Vietnam War that he criticized finally ended in 1975, but in the intervening decades, the U.S. military has invaded numerous nations and left a mountain range of dead. It costs one-sixth of the federal budget. To that, we must add the price of war itself, as well as the carbon footprint and land poisoning generated by military exploits. U.S. armed forces have wrought immeasurable pain in the world, and are economically and environmentally unsustainable.   

The U.S. military is a giant, pyramid command structure from the president, its commander in chief, to the 1.3 million active-duty troops, 200,000 of which are at the nearly 800 bases in over 170 countries. Overall it has 2,200 fighter jets. The Air Force around 1,400 combat aircraft. The Navy has 275 surface ships and submarines, and 11 active aircraft carriers. More than 6,000 U.S. nuclear warheads are ready to kill all life on Earth. And now, we have a Space Force. (I can’t believe, I just wrote that.) The 2020 budget is $738 billion. The recent release of the “Afghanistan Papers” showed the Pentagon lied about progress in the war, even as it burned through more than $2 trillion.

The $2 trillion spent on war was stolen from the poor. A 2018 study counted 552,830 homeless Americans, among them 40,000 veterans. $2 trillion. Wasted. Even as 38 million people live in poverty. $2 trillion. Wasted. Even as more than 42 million citizens go hungry, among them 13 million children. How much money does it take to build homes? Or feed the poor? Or provide health care or free college? Well, we have answers. For just $350 billion, the National Priorities Project reports that we can cover the gap between the health care we have now and Medicare for All. For $22 billion, we could feed all the hungry people in the country. And for $1.6 trillion, we could erase all student debt and free a generation of youth from 21st century peonage.

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