I remember driving in LA that night of April of '67, listening to the powerful speech Dr. King gave about Vietnam and how he saw what it was doing to the US. A reminder of this speech has been on the air this week as Tavis Smiley does a retrospective on events of King's last year. The death of King occurred a year forward from that speech. I recall it sounding so right on, so strong, so pervasively to the point of what was going wrong in this nation that I could hardly keep from weeping. King's voice was a bugle cry about the relation between Vietnam and what was occurring in the nation, its unfulfilled promise, its young who were being wasted offered up as cannon fodder to buttress a corrupt regime. Bob Herbert brings this round to what we are doing with current wars, especially in Afghanistan and Karzai's corrupt scene. With growing and demanding problems on the home front, it seems like a replay of those late 60s days when Vietnam took many of us to the edge of outrage, even insanity as the leadership dug in and continued an unconscionable war.  BP

"I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,? said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ?because my conscience leaves me no other choice.?

This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a ?betrayal.?

He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King?s indictment of ?the madness of Vietnam.? And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.

Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops ?in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.?

It?s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on the planet.

Bob Herbert

NY Times 3April10