The irony was striking. There was President Barack Obama on Wednesday, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarkable “I Have a Dream” speech. The irony lay not in Obama’s banality, but in the fact that as he spoke, his war council was planning to bomb Syria.
While King’s speech on Aug. 28, 1963, was about equality before the law and the plight of the poor, less than four years later (and one year before his assassination), in April 1967, he made news by denouncing the U.S. war in Vietnam. It’s not difficult to imagine how King would view fellow Nobel Peace Prize–winner Obama’s intention with respect to Syria, not to mention the broader militarism of the administration. I know such things just aren’t done — alas — but it would have been heartening had a member of King’s family criticized Obama’s war program during the tributes to MLK that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment