Editor,

We do a disservice to Dr. King, and to ourselves, when we commemorate his life and ignore the prophetic message he left behind.

Our too-often sanitized remembrance of Dr. King focuses only on his non-violent quest for civil rights. What is being whitewashed from his legacy is his message about violence, war and growing militarism. For some, this message hits too close to home.

Dr. King insisted that no significant social problem — wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife — could be resolved while we remain “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift.”

His words ring true today, given our pressing social needs, crumbling infrastructure and a bloated military budget of $756 billion (more than education, health and human services, and housing and urban development combined). Indeed, Dr. King might feel that we have suffered the “spiritual death” he warned against.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, Dr. King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Now we are the world’s largest producer, importer and exporter of arms — and we are waging a perpetual “war on terrorism” with troops, drones and obscene amounts of money contributing to violent conflicts around the globe.

A former Iraq veteran and analyst who recently spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Quakers explained that our “war” is not working. Instead, it is creating generations of violent extremists at a terrible human and economic cost. Matt Southworth’s shared experience gave meaning to Dr. King’s words, “Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. … The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken…”

How would Dr. King view today’s world? Just read his words. He’d no doubt see our military leaders and the military industrial complex as the tail wagging the dog — shaping policy to ensure more profitable wars instead of peace and stability. Dr. King would be morally outraged at the practice of torture, the loss of life, the millions of displaced and scattered refugees, and the impacts of warfare training on our own citizens.

He’d remind us, “These are the times for real choices and not false ones … when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly…”

Rick Abraham

Greenbank