I watched yet another documentary about MLK this weekend. What was centrally interesting was the attempt by the fine liberal folks at PBS to place his words in context with what's going on today. To that end the narrator intoned how relevant King's words against the Vietnam War was to the situation in which we find ourselves today. They then cued the Mike Douglas Show with King vs some cat named Tony Martin.
Several things impressed me about King. The first set of observations was about the man himself. I made a conscious effort to make a distinction between his preaching voice and his normal voice. It was clear to me that he did well in soundbites in a way that has impressed a generation of politicians in his wake. Even in his normal voice he used a different set of rhetorical devices to good effect.
Secondly, he appeared to me to be a very selfless person in that he set himself up to embody conscience. King disappears into his ethics and reflects not much of himself as a man, but himself as a symbol of what conscience does to a man. It is an effect that I think he couldn't long have maintained without becoming a monk. I try to imagine what might have been were King to have survived the shooting attack that took his life. If he had a scar on his face, he would have been less able to disappear into the abstract. I'd say his disappearing only worked in the context of a moral hardline on behalf of the Negro of whose attitudes and frustrations he became the leading exponent. I can see how talking to King, who was always willing to say so, led many white commentators to ask and repeat such questions: What does the Negro want today? How is the Negro feeling today?
His style of representation did not challenge the Negro so much as it challenged whitefolks to idealize their own consciousness and ask themselves if they would bear up as well as King does. It is an interesting and brilliant tactic, but I don't think it would work at all in today's racial environment. That is a good thing, and I think it is also why Malcolm X resonates differently.
So much for the man, now to the content. As practical matters of turning Christian cheeks on the violence of war, King offered two alternatives in the context of Vietnam. One was a 'unilateral withdrawal' and the other was a 'negotiated settlement'. It seems to me that if King has any pull with Democrat, anti-war, liberal or Left constituencies today they might consider these options. Of the two, I've only heard tell of the first. Now I don't spend enough time at Daily Kos to know better, but I've never heard anything of the second option. Why not? Why is there no call for a negotiated settlement in Iraq?
Unilateral Withdrawal
The US Armed Forces remain in Iraq not only at the pleasure of the Iraqi government but at the behest of the Iraqi government. If we unilaterally left, it is my opinion that we would do more to hurt
Iraq than we did by pre-emption. I think that at this point we have
made good on our unfulfilled promise to the Kurdish population of Iraq,
but we would repeat the same mistake of Desert Storm if we were to
leave. Naturally, the American polity will determine in some form or fashion the type of withdrawal. If Congress has the intestinal fortitude (guts, but not brains) to defund the troops, then that's one way to go. If the Commander in Chief draws down to zero that sends a different message.
Ceasefire & Negotiated Settlement
There is no negotiation to be done with rebels. There is no civil war so much as there are suicide bombers on the Sunni side and Death Squads on the Shia side. Since we only do business via the State Department with de facto governments, then the only one who we would negotiate with is the Maliki Administration. They want us to stay.
So if peaceniks would suggest that the US start negotiating, with whom would we draw up a separate peace? Such people are nameless, but I would surely like to see if Sy Hersh names any such names. I am under the impression that there are no Americans with the cojones to go to Iraq and join or even birddog any suicide cells or death squads. None have really named any of the insurgent groups other than the Mahdi Army.
Are there any followers of the Iraq Study Group who are calling for a ceasefire? Any of the Democrat candidates breach such an idea, seriously?
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