(FinalCall.com) – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan are prophetic voices for peace who sought to stop wars, started by U.S. Presidents, which were based upon lies and deceit of the American people. Their prophetic warnings to the Government were ignored and as a result thousands of innocent lives were lost and the economy of America was weakened.
For Dr. King, it was the escalation of the Vietnam War. In 1964 U.S involvement only consisted of military advisors. That summer the media reported that “North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an ‘unprovoked attack’ against a U.S. destroyer on ‘routine patrol’ in the Tonkin Gulf and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a ‘deliberate attack’ on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.” That second attack never occurred, and this was known by the President.
President Lyndon Johnson went on national television and repeated this lie to the American people and announced an escalation of American involvement in Vietnam committing thousands of troops and ordering air strikes against North Vietnam.
›These reports were circulated on the news and in papers around the country by major media who had access to information that contradicted the Presidents position. It was not until years later that the truth was known. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) published an article in 1994 on the thirty-year anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf lie that launched the Vietnam War. The article explains, “A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media…leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.”
By 1967 according to www.vietnamwar.com, the largest U.S. military offensive of the war took place. It was in the midst of this offensive that Dr. King retreats with his advisors to discuss his stance on the war. Many of his associates and some of his advisors cautioned him not to speak out against the war. Dr. King felt that he had to break the ‘silence of betrayal.’ He went to New York April 4, 1967 to speak at Riverside Baptist Church. It was his first speech on the war.
“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both Black and White, through the poverty program.”
“And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
“Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population,” said Dr. King.
In the present time the Iraq war is also based upon the lies and deceit of another U.S. President. President George W. Bush after 911 claimed that al-Qaeda and high level Iraqi officials had met prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center. When this was proven a lie, he claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would soon have a nuclear weapon. This was the provocation to launch the war against Iraq.
Like Dr. King, Minister Farrakhan warned the President. In his first letter dated December 1, 2001, just months after the attack on the World Trade Center and the U.S. Military offensive in Afghanistan, Minister Farrakhan wrote to the President, “You will unite the Muslim world in hostility against America and Great Britain, and, you will use your great position of power inadvertently to call for a Holy War against the West.”
“The coalition that you are gathering will fall away from you and you will have to pursue this war alone. I am afraid that this extended war may take a turn that you and your advisors least expect, and involve America in the greatest of all wars, the War of Armageddon, in which no nation will be left out, including Russia and China.”
In his second letter written October 30, 2002 to President Bush, Minister Farrakhan wrote, “There are times in history when men of conviction go against the tide of world thought and opinion, bringing suffering upon themselves to establish a new truth or a new idea.”
This is clearly what happened to Dr. King because after his speech against the Vietnam War many withdrew their support for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Critics claimed that he had enough to do. He should stick to spiritual matters and civil rights. But Dr. King continued his protest. One year after his speech he was assassinated.
Minister Farrakhan continues his prophetic warning to President Bush, he wrote: “However, this is not that time for you. In my judgment, this is a time when the President of the United States must not only listen to his advisors and study their agendas, but he must listen to world opinion.”
“If the President of the United States seems to show no respect for world opinion or for the thoughts of the members of the Security Council of the United Nations, then, your actions will turn the nations of the world against you and against America.”
President Lyndon Johnson did not listen to Dr. King’s prophetic warnings. The war was a failure. It lasted for 10 years and 55,000 men were killed or listed as missing.
President Bush has ignored Minister Farrakhan’s prophetic warnings. The war is going on its fourth year with more than 3,000 American lives lost and more than 20,000 injured.
The president has announced that he will send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said the President’s plan to send more troops to Iraq unveiled in a speech January 10, was a major mistake.
“I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam if it’s carried out,” said Senator Hagel.
Related links:
Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
Minister Louis Farrakhan: Guidance for America and the World in a time of Trouble
http://www.finalcall.com/pressconference/
