From activist Lenni Brenner:
(Brenner is the author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983) among a number of other works and writes frequently for publications from the Nation to the Jewish Guardian.
DECLARATION RE DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING’S BIRTHDAY, JANUARY 19,
AND BARACK OBAMA’S INAUGURATION, JANUARY 20th.
As if in celestial convergence, Martin Luther King’s birthday falls on the
eve of the inauguration of the nation’s first Black president. With the world
economy in free fall, amid spreading armed conflict, the classic question posed
from pulpits at this time – What would Dr. King do? – has never been more
urgent.
January 19 and 20 are heavy with historical significance and contradiction.
Barack Obama proclaims that his presidency would be unthinkable were it not for
the civil rights struggle which King personifies. Yet he also hails John
Kennedy – who he knows criminally wiretapped King – as his role model. And is it
conceivable that King would be pleased with Obama after he broke his promise
to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it included an immunity clause
for telecommunications companies that collaborated with Bush’s illegal
eavesdropping after 9/11?
The New York Times correctly calls Obama’s orientation “center-right.” Never
an advocate of total withdrawal from Iraq, he called for the recruitment of
nearly 100,000 additional military, expanded war in Afghanistan, and more
aggressive US actions in Pakistan. In retaining Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
and other Republican Pentagon political appointees, Obama blurs the differences
between his foreign policy and George Bush’s. His United Nations ambassador,
Susan Rice, advocates “humanitarian” military intervention in Africa, and
Obama supports Bush’s latest US Africa Command (AFRICOM). He is silent on the
US-fomented war in Somalia.
Obama is also silent re the onslaught on Gaza, even as the Israeli embassy
justified it by distributing videos of his campaign statement: “If somebody was
sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters slept at night, I’m
going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do
the same thing.”
Domestically, Obama has put his economic portfolio into the hands of Wall
Street hacks intimately associated with financial deregulation and the
plague-like spread of derivatives and other exotic “fictional capital” –- the witch’s
brew of meltdown — and backed Bush’s banker bailout.
Is it difficult to project what Dr. King’s politics would be, were he alive
today? Faced with an administration committed to expansion of a military
already as costly as the combined armed forces of the rest of the planet, King
would join — indeed lead — a principled, active anti-war opposition.
King called the America of his day “the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world,” and his characterization remains apt. He broke with Lyndon Johnson’s
White House, as he saw the Vietnam War obliterating the “shining moment” when
it “seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black
and white – through the poverty program.” On April 4, 1967, King explained 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.” Domestically, Obama’s
determination to put more military “boots on the ground” in multiplying
conflicts is an update of the “demonic destructive suction tube” King opposed.
He would doubtlessly view Obama’s military posture as “a war against the poor,”
as was LBJ’s war.
Obama’s appointments have been made, his priorities amply recorded. Given
Obama’s declared politics, King would never grant a “honeymoon” season to an
incoming administration placing government economic levers in the hands of
plundering bankers diverting huge public wealth to the feeding of the dogs of war. He
became his day’s greatest “drum major” for social justice and peace, and we
have only one alternative before us. We call upon Americans and the world to
try to act now in Dr. King’s spirit and join us in opposing any and all imperial
administrations, in the media, in the voting booth and in the streets.
Signatories (as of January 19, 2009)
Lenni Brenner, Pat Bryden, Tom Condit, Lenore Jean Daniels, Ph.D., Michael Dickinson, Ghassan El-Kadri, Vera Alice Vasques El-Kadri,
Dieter Elken, Per Fagereng, John W. Farley, Dermot Ferry, Glen Ford, John Glackin, Robert Glaser, Patricia Gray, David Halpin, Dove and Dolphin Charity, Norma J F Harrison, Tuma Hazou, Stanley Heller, Edward S. Herman, Tom Lacey, Ronit Lentin, David Letwin, Claran Mc Clean, Colm McGinn, David McReynolds, Chuck Mohan, Tinoush Moulaei, Liz Mulford, Judith Norman, Tolu Olorunda, Margaret Parrish, Ginger Pepper, James Petras, Millie Phillips, Karen Platt, Lila Rajiva, Roland Rance, Esther Rapoport, Mel Reeves, R. B. Riddle, Eugene E. Ruyle, Al Sargis, Tony Savin, Evalyn F. Segal, Martha Abu Shawish, Roger Sheppard, Roland Sheppard, Michael J. Smith, Kwame Somburu, William Steinsmith, Stuart Troy, C. T. Weber, Abraham Weizfeld, Derek Wharton, Jebsen & Company (Hong Kong) Ltd., Joan Wiley