guno
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- #141
This Martin Luther king?
Thank God we have John Conyers is Congress, I only wish that we had more like him. [Applause]
The inflation of war cuts the pay of the employed, the pension check of the retired and the savings of almost everyone. Inflation has stopped creeping and has begun running. Working people feel the double impact of inflation and unemployment immediately. But Negroes feel its impact with crushing severity because they live on the margin in all respects and have no reserve to cushion shock. There is a great deal of debate about the nation's ability to maintain war and commit the billions required to attack poverty. Theoretically the United States has resources for both. But an iron logic dictates that we shall never voluntarily do both for two reasons. First, the majority of the present Congress and the Administration, as distinguished from the majority of the people, is single mindedly devoted to the pursuit of the war. It has been estimated by Senator (Harkey) that we spend approximately $500,000 to kill a single enemy soldier in Vietnam. And yet we spend about $53 for each impoverished American in anti-poverty programs. Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It appropriates poverty funds with miserliness and grudging reluctance. The government is emotionally committed to the war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor.
Second, the government will resist committing adequate resources for domestic reform because these are reserves indispensable for a military adventure. The logical war requires of a nation deploy its well fought and immediate combat and simultaneously that it maintain substantial reserves. It will resist any diminishing of its military power through the draining off of resources for the social good. This is the inescapable contradiction between war and social progress at home. Military adventures must stultify domestic progress to ensure the certainty of military success. This is the reason the poor, and particularly Negroes, have a double stake in peace and international harmony. This is not to say it is useless to fight for domestic reform, on the contrary, as people discover in the struggle what is impeding their progress they comprehend the full and real cost of the war to them in their daily lives.
Senator George McGovern has summed up these views in the following words, "Congress must never again surrender its power under our Constitutional system by permitting an ill-advised, undeclared war of this kind. Our involvement in South Vietnam came about through a series of moves by the Executive Branch. Each one seemingly restrained and yet each one setting the stage for a deeper commitment. The complex of administration moves involving the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon and various private interests, all of these have played a greater role than has Congress. Congress can not be proud of its function in the dreary history of this steadily widening war. That function has been one largely of acquiescence, in little understood administrative efforts. The surveillance, the debate, and the dissent since 1965, while courageous and admirable, came too late in the day to head off the foolish course charted off by our policy makers." "For the future," the senator concluded, "members of Congress and the Administration will do well to heed the admonitions of Edmund Burke, distinguished legislator of an earlier day, 'A conscientious man would be cautious, how he delve in blood.'"
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king03.html
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