Mlk Speech on Vietnam

Martin Luther King delivered this speech in regards to the United States’ involvement with the Vietnam War. However, King argues that these actions in Vietnam are linked to African American struggles for civil rights in the United States. He wants to bring it to the attention of the fellow Americans to reconsider the thoughts behind the involvement in the war and moreover, for people to reevaluate the government’s goals to see if they are truly beneficial to the citizens of the U.S. or the Vietnam people overall.
First off, King argues that the war was sending sons, brothers, and husbands, especially black men to fight for the cause of Vietnam. However, it is crucial to note that these were the men “who had been crippled by our society” and are sent to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”   The war sets up the cruel ironic situation where Negro and white boys go out to kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to allow them to sit together in the same schools. King reasons that while the United States needs to worry about its own people’s struggles – the blacks that do not receive civil rights in its own borders – before going off and try to gain democracy for other countries like Vietnam; there are issues that we need to solve at home first before we can put ourselves above others and try to help them.
        Moreover, King brings up the argument that we must see the war from the Vietnamese people’s point of view. Our government felt that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence so we supported the France in its re-conquest of a former colony. By doing so, the U.S. again “fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.”   The U.S. came to a deep mistrust and therefore conspired with Diem to prevent elections that would have brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam.   Moreover, the U.S. did not reveal the...