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Excerpt from the book:
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the war in Vietnam at a gathering of concerned clergy and laity at Riverside Church in New York City. His titled speech for the day was “A Time to Break Silence,” in which he spoke of the connections between the unjustifiable war in Vietnam and its profound impact on the issues of civil rights in the United States. King suggested that what was at work in America was a great sickness and if we did not seriously deal with this reality, this sickness, that we would, indeed, pass on our sins to the next generations. In this famous speech he prophetically spoke:
"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper sickness 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 [daughters] of the living God." (Martin Luther King)
The sickness of the American spirit has, without question, continued to the next generation. Little did King know that in the decades to follow that the U.S. would invade the many countries and murder the millions that we have. Little did he know that thirty years after he delivered his speech at Riverside Church that a conservative think tank consisting of the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney would be devising a construct for United States global dominance and leadership with the aim of stifling any rival superpower in the world. In June of 1997 the components of this think tank making up what is known as "The Project of The New American Century" created a document of its core principles stating its aim to “make the case and rally support for American global leadership.” It went on to state,
"If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership…We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
So here we stand at the beginning of a new century, a generation after King and the civil rights movement, and we are concerned over Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, Iran and North Korea, Cuba and Colombia. In short, we live and breathe the sick reality of war, whether it is in our politics, or in the media, in our schools, or in our churches. In the words of writer Chris Hedges, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." But it in fact goes even deeper than merely a sense of meaning or purpose and seeps into our most destructive human desire—the thirst for ultimate power.
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