A teacher's reflection upon words from Martin Luther King on The Path to War that American has chosen and the values that lead us down that path

Daily Kos: A Sunday reflection upon words
A teacher whose ideas I greatly respect writes on Daily Kos about politics and education. He reminds us here of the prophetic words of Dr Martin Luther King spoken 40 years ago at Riverside Church in NYC: "A Time to Break Silence".

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." 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.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

As a very few of us attend the Tillman film this weekend the message of the film is echoed in this 40 year old speech on War, Hate, and greed versus love wisdom and justice. Unfortunately nothing seems to have changed in 40 years.

Read the rest of the article on this speech at the link above.

Cost of War: The War Economy pits Social Security against Defense : Veterans Today

The War Economy pits Social Security against Defense : Veterans Today

This is a new source on veterans news I found recently and they are responding to the VFP War Economy compaign with some cold hard facts from Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who also has provided some of the data we have used for several years on the Gainesville chapter 14 Cost of War project.

Recently we posted two articles based on media releases from Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Veterans for Peace on how they propose launching a public awareness campaign to educate the American electorate on how to connect the dots between the Trillion Dollar Wars and meltdown of the U.S. Economy.

In fact the projected fiscal cost of the War on Terror has increase from one trillion in 2005 to over three trillion and growing by 2008. This is a fiscal conservative’s nightmare just THINKING about how much the 2011 price tag of the wars will be unless of course you are a fiscal conservative who benefits from the wars. Source: The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Veterans Day 2010: Honor the Consciences of Our Veterans? Bring them home!

t r u t h o u t | Veterans Day 2010: Honor the Consciences of Our Veterans
This is a Veterans Day greeting that VFP can honor.

At my school today they held a Veterans Day breakfast. Four WWII vets were there from the local Veterans retirement home. We all stood and introduced ourselves. Every service was there but most of the participants were older, perhaps the experiences for us have faded and are less painful. I stood and identified my service and my Vietnam tour of duty and ended with "I am proud to be a member of Veterans for Peace". There were several affirming nods in the crowd from other veterans. It felt good.

On How War with Iran might Destroy the United States | Informed Comment

On How War with Iran might Destroy the United States | Informed Comment:

"I can’t think of anything that would be worse for the US economy, or for Obama’s prospects for a second term, than going to a war footing with Iran. And, my own experience is that if you go to a war footing with a country, you have to be prepared for things spinning out of control and into actual war. Since Americans go running to their congressmen demanding a repeal of the Bill of Rights every time there is a little pipe bomb somewhere, anything that might cause terrorism on US soil is deadly to our over 200 year old Republic. My guess is that a third war right about now, for the reasons outlined above, would just about finish us off as a nation."