Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said:
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be -- are -- are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
A commenter said:
He should be tried for war crimes. I served twice in Iraq and never did anybody commit acts like this. Even when we lost 2 soldiers, one a good friend, did we lose our cool and kill innocent civilians during our convoys. He violated his ROE and noncombatants were killed on purpose. He deserves prison.
But she misses the point. If Iraqis resisted the criminal invasion of their country, and gijanearmy coould not deal with it, they would bring in harder people who could and would. Think Fallujah. And Jane, perhaps you were not asked to do this work. Thank God.
It does not matter if the vast majority of soldiers and cops are decent. The vast majority in Nazi Germany were decent. When they are backed by the indecent, then it does not matter.
Dr. King also said, in the speech above,
and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.
He was dead exactly one year later. Nothing has changed because the aftermath was violence, and the powers that be bought off the leaders. The war went another eight years. Many young people entered government to improve it. And it just got worse. You cannot fix a polity that defines itself as the entity with a monopoly on violence.