As the mess in Iraq\u2014a mess predicted by the likes of such \u201cisolationists\u201d as Patrick J. Buchanan and Ilana Mercer a dozen years ago\u2014deepens, it is with renewed gusto that the Iraq War\u2019s most impassioned neoconservative supporters argue for a robust \u201cinterventionist\u201d American foreign policy.<\/p>\n
At the same time, they never waver in heaping praise upon praise upon Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n
But when rhetorical exhibitionism collides with ideological fervor, the inconsistency promises to be explosive.<\/p>\n
King, you see, is every bit as much of an \u201cisolationist\u201d as are any of the so-called \u201cisolationists\u201d who neoconservatives have lambasted.<\/p>\n
On April 30, 1967 King gave a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church titled, \u201cIt\u2019s A Dark Day in Our Nation.\u201d\u00a0 He cautioned his audience against being deceived into thinking that \u201cGod chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.\u201d\u00a0 Just the opposite, in fact, is the case.\u00a0 King said that he \u201ccan hear God saying to America, \u2018You\u2019re too arrogant!\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I\u2019ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn\u2019t even know my name.\u201d<\/p>\n
King, obviously, was no fan of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, referring to the war in Vietnam not just as \u201cunjust,\u201d but as \u201cfutile\u201d <\/em>and \u201cevil.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Had King been alive to make these remarks today about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it goes without saying that their neoconservative supporters in the GOP, talk radio, and Fox News would have eviscerated him for both his lack of \u201cmoral clarity\u201d as well as his disregard\u2014and perhaps even disdain\u2014for \u201cthe troops\u201d and their families.<\/p>\n In the first place, King would be convicted of either characteristic left-wing moral idiocy or characteristic libertarian \u201camorality\u201d for charging, not the \u201cIslamists\u201d (or communist North Vietnamese) with evil doing, but America, <\/em>the only superpower ever willing to fight the globe over for \u201cliberty.\u201d<\/p>\n And for his description of the war as \u201cevil,\u201d King would render himself vulnerable to the allegation that he is contemptuous of \u201cthe troops,\u201d for there would be no evil war if not for the evil-doing soldiers waging it.<\/p>\n Yet King would also be accused of being disrespectful of \u201cthe troops\u201d and their families <\/em>for claiming that the war(s) were \u201cfutile.\u201d\u00a0 How dare he suggest that American soldiers sacrificed life and limb \u201cin vain?\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, if the neoconservative opponents of \u201cisolationism\u201d were consistent, then they should be saying these things of King now <\/em>for his comments then.\u00a0 <\/em>After all, the Red Menace of North Vietnam was much more formidable a force for evil than anything with which we\u2019ve had to reckon in Iraq or Afghanistan, and exponentially more Americans lost their lives fighting in Vietnam than have lost their lives fighting in the Middle East.<\/p>\n There is the additional consideration that, to the present day, neoconservatives continue to blame \u201cthe left\u201d for having lost Vietnam, being particularly relentless in their criticism of that emblem of left-wing \u201canti-Americanism,\u201d Jane Fonda.<\/p>\n Yet MLK was every bit as outspoken a critic of the war in Vietnam as was Fonda.<\/p>\n For all of the resources invested in it, King characterized the Vietnam War as a \u201cdemonic<\/em>, destructive suction tube\u201d (emphasis mine).\u00a0 The war entailed \u201ccruel manipulation of the poor\u201d and made America into \u201cthe greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,\u201d a country mired in its own \u201cdeadly arrogance,\u201d hubris \u201cthat has poisoned the international situation for all of these years.\u201d\u00a0 America, King declared, tried \u201cto sabotage the Geneva Accord.\u201d<\/p>\n But it gets even worse, as King starts to sound like John Kerry sounded when he testified in 1971 to the evils allegedly perpetrated by American soldiers in Vietnam.\u00a0 Not only are Americans guilty of placing Vietnamese in \u201cconcentration camps;\u201d not only do Americans \u201cpoison their water\u201d and \u201ckill a million acres of their crops.\u201d\u00a0 The Vietnamese see their children \u201cdegraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.\u201d America, King insists, \u201cdestroyed\u201d the \u201ctwo most cherished institutions\u201d of the Vietnamese: \u201cthe family and the village.\u201d<\/p>\n The Vietnam War embodies \u201cthe giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Whether King was correct in his analysis is neither here nor there.\u00a0 The point is that if, as neoconservatives insist, \u201cisolationism\u201d is an intellectually and morally impoverished position, then King deserves not the reverence that they show him, but unqualified condemnation, for King was<\/em> an \u201cisolationist.\u201d Worse, King\u2014a Nobel Peace Prize winner and world figure\u2014did far more, by neoconservatives\u2019 reasoning, to undermine America\u2019s cause during war than anything of which a Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan could be said to be guilty.\u00a0 In fact, given his stature, King was even more harmful than \u201cHanoi Jane.\u201d<\/p>\n Conclusion: Disdain for \u201cisolationism\u201d is radically incompatible with praise for Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the mess in Iraq\u2014a mess predicted by the likes of such \u201cisolationists\u201d as Patrick J. Buchanan and Ilana Mercer a dozen years ago\u2014deepens, it is with renewed gusto that the Iraq War\u2019s most impassioned neoconservative supporters argue for a robust \u201cinterventionist\u201d American foreign policy. At the same time, they never waver in heaping praise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n