Recently, the stories of two men who strongly sounded their opposition to the Vietnam War at great personal expense have re-emerged in the public forum: the stories of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Daniel Ellsberg.
Two separate documentaries profiling each man have premiered within the last year, "MLK: A Call to Conscience" (2010) and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (2009).
The films explore the reasons--and moral reasoning---that led each man to break his own silence and condemn the war in Vietnam as immoral. Both men took tremendous risks to their reputations, careers, and lives—and for their acts, they found themselves pilloried by a public majority that continued to support the war.
For Ellsberg, the brilliant intellectual, former US Marine, and Pentagon official with top security clearance who played a major role in shaping the war in Vietnam, his decision to shift his thinking and view the war in Vietnam as immoral was, as he describes, like an “axe” that spilt his life in half. Not only did he come to see that the war in Vietnam was immoral, but he also saw firsthand that it was being sold to the American public through a series of lies, denials, and manipulations that stretched across four administrations.
Government officials smiled as they reported “progress” being made in the war; they falsified reports, omitted key information, violated the Geneva accords, and committed atrocities, all in an effort, Ellsberg began to see, to save face and not lose the war.
Ellsberg’s decision to remove 7,000 pages of top secret documents from the Pentagon, photocopy them over the course of several weeks, and leak them to the press was, to say the very least, a bold move. The documents comprised a “secret history” of the Vietnam War, assembled under the direction of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Together, these 7,000 pages revealed the true nature of the war; in black and white they constituted proof of the government’s lies, deceptions, and crimes.
Four years before Ellsberg made that fateful choice, King made a choice as well. As a civil rights leader who daily risked his life in the non-violent struggle to gain rights for African Americans, workers, the poor, women, and all Americans, King saw clearly that the war in Vietnam was directly connected with the struggle for justice in the US.
According to King, the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” were linked together in American culture, and the fallout from the war was not only the erosion of justice in America, but also the erosion of humanity itself.
And so, when Kind decided that he would step beyond the boundaries of the Civil Rights movement to speak about---and strongly against---the Vietnam War, many of his colleagues warned him not to do it. It was 1967, and to take a stance against the war was largely viewed in the US as akin to a traitorous act.
On April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York, King gave the sermon, “Beyond Vietnam.”
“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony,” King said, “but we must speak.”
In his sermon, King provided a masterful philosophy against the war and directly asked others to join him. “These are the times for real choices and not false ones,” he stated. “We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
The sermon’s title, “Beyond Vietnam,” contained a meaning that was not readily apparent. For, it was King’s belief that it was not the war in Vietnam per se that was the singular issue. For, there would be more wars, more violence “beyond Vietnam” since war stemmed from an inherent sickness in American culture. Thus King called for the end of the war and for “a true revolution of values.”
“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. 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 fallout from King’s sermon was swift. He was broadly—and publicly condemned. He was maligned. He was called a traitor. And, exactly one year to the day after he broke his silence, he was murdered.
Ellsberg, who faced a 115 year prison sentence if convicted from his “treasonous” act, was also maligned and called a traitor.
That the stories of Ellsberg's and King's willingness to stand up and break the silence should re-emerge now, as the US continues its long tradition of violence “beyond Vietnam,” is not surprising.
We need the moral instruction that they provide. Both acted with courage. They looked directly at the truth and saw, despite the agony they knew they would endure, that they could no longer be silent.
To do nothing, that was the true war crime.
Two separate documentaries profiling each man have premiered within the last year, "MLK: A Call to Conscience" (2010) and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (2009).
The films explore the reasons--and moral reasoning---that led each man to break his own silence and condemn the war in Vietnam as immoral. Both men took tremendous risks to their reputations, careers, and lives—and for their acts, they found themselves pilloried by a public majority that continued to support the war.
For Ellsberg, the brilliant intellectual, former US Marine, and Pentagon official with top security clearance who played a major role in shaping the war in Vietnam, his decision to shift his thinking and view the war in Vietnam as immoral was, as he describes, like an “axe” that spilt his life in half. Not only did he come to see that the war in Vietnam was immoral, but he also saw firsthand that it was being sold to the American public through a series of lies, denials, and manipulations that stretched across four administrations.
Government officials smiled as they reported “progress” being made in the war; they falsified reports, omitted key information, violated the Geneva accords, and committed atrocities, all in an effort, Ellsberg began to see, to save face and not lose the war.
Ellsberg’s decision to remove 7,000 pages of top secret documents from the Pentagon, photocopy them over the course of several weeks, and leak them to the press was, to say the very least, a bold move. The documents comprised a “secret history” of the Vietnam War, assembled under the direction of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Together, these 7,000 pages revealed the true nature of the war; in black and white they constituted proof of the government’s lies, deceptions, and crimes.
Four years before Ellsberg made that fateful choice, King made a choice as well. As a civil rights leader who daily risked his life in the non-violent struggle to gain rights for African Americans, workers, the poor, women, and all Americans, King saw clearly that the war in Vietnam was directly connected with the struggle for justice in the US.
According to King, the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” were linked together in American culture, and the fallout from the war was not only the erosion of justice in America, but also the erosion of humanity itself.
And so, when Kind decided that he would step beyond the boundaries of the Civil Rights movement to speak about---and strongly against---the Vietnam War, many of his colleagues warned him not to do it. It was 1967, and to take a stance against the war was largely viewed in the US as akin to a traitorous act.
On April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York, King gave the sermon, “Beyond Vietnam.”
“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony,” King said, “but we must speak.”
In his sermon, King provided a masterful philosophy against the war and directly asked others to join him. “These are the times for real choices and not false ones,” he stated. “We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
The sermon’s title, “Beyond Vietnam,” contained a meaning that was not readily apparent. For, it was King’s belief that it was not the war in Vietnam per se that was the singular issue. For, there would be more wars, more violence “beyond Vietnam” since war stemmed from an inherent sickness in American culture. Thus King called for the end of the war and for “a true revolution of values.”
“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. 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 fallout from King’s sermon was swift. He was broadly—and publicly condemned. He was maligned. He was called a traitor. And, exactly one year to the day after he broke his silence, he was murdered.
Ellsberg, who faced a 115 year prison sentence if convicted from his “treasonous” act, was also maligned and called a traitor.
That the stories of Ellsberg's and King's willingness to stand up and break the silence should re-emerge now, as the US continues its long tradition of violence “beyond Vietnam,” is not surprising.
We need the moral instruction that they provide. Both acted with courage. They looked directly at the truth and saw, despite the agony they knew they would endure, that they could no longer be silent.
To do nothing, that was the true war crime.