Someone thought it was appropriate to have a military jet flyover to honor MLK, America prophet (and martyr) of peace and justice?

Yesterday’s (somewhat incoherent and) hypocritical Presidential Statement:

“It seems fitting on Martin Luther King Day that I come and look at the Emancipation Proclamation in its original form. Abraham Lincoln recognized that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King lived on that admonition to call our country to a higher calling. And today we celebrate the life of an American who called Americans to account when we didn’t live up to our ideals.

King was spied on. He was killed. We have a holiday to remember that, and to pause to think about equality, civil rights, peace and freedom.

Bush has active distaste for this kind of message, and you can see him flounder if you see the video. If King were alive, he’d still be spied on, he’d probably be called a terrorist. The arrogance of King George is incompatible with the genius and message of Dr. King.

Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated in 1968. Conyers and the late Rep. Shirley Chisholm, Democrat of New York, resubmitted King holiday legislation each subsequent legislative session. It wasn’t signed into law until 1983 – surprisingly, by President Ronald Reagan.

In honor of yesterday’s holiday, I wanted to post something but I was discouraged by what I saw. It’s a day late, but here is a little something. Just substitute “Iraq” for “Vietnam” and much of this is still very pertinent.

..I am as deeply concerned about our own 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 a hell for the poor.
…
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 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 has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

Read the whole speech: African Americans – Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Speech “Beyond Vietnam,” Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church 4 April 1967 at New York City

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr