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Just War? Or just war...

by Mumia Abu-Jamal
As if calling the Afghanistan war a 'just' one wasn't ironic enough (the State of Afghanistan didn't attack the U.S. - a group of foreigners in that country did), to be accepting a peace prize while escalating war makes the prize about as meaningful as the latest reality show on TV.
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Just War? Or just war.....

[col. writ. 12/13/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Politics, it is said, makes strange bedfellows -- but the Nobel Peace Prize may make even stranger ones.

There has been considerable commentary over the award to President Barack Obama, and whether or not it was deserved.

His speech upon receipt of the honor was not about peace, but about war -- or, to be precise "just war." (For centuries, popes and princes have put forth theories of what constitutes just -- as opposed to unjust -- wars).

As if calling the Afghanistan war a 'just' one wasn't ironic enough (the State of Afghanistan didn't attack the U.S. - a group of foreigners in that country did), to be accepting a peace prize while escalating war makes the prize about as meaningful as the latest reality show on TV.

Rather than 'just war', perhaps the speech should've been about justifying war -- something that politicians are pretty good at.

One could hardly miss the contrast between Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose previous receipt of the prize, and 'dream' oratory were drafted into the service of war.

But if King were alive, he would doubtless be a protester rather than an applauder of more war.

King's friend and speech writer, Rev. Dr. Vincent Harding, points to Kings' Riverside speech in New York, where he came out forcefully against the war in Vietnam. When the nation's political, religious and media leaders defended the war as just as necessary, King saw the human suffering of Vietnamese people and found it intolerable.

In Harding's book Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, (Maryknoll: 1996) King's comments to his SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) staff after reading a Jan. 1967 Ramparts magazine article on the war was illustrative.

Said King,"...[A]fter reading that article, I said to myself, "Never again will I be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands and thousands of little children in Vietnam' " (p.101)

Several months later he would preach at Riverside, where he would tell the congregation "the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism" (101)

Obama's references to the reality of evil in world affairs thrilled conservatives, for it endorsed war (the capitalist nations's greatest economic engine ) as a solution.

King addressed evil squarely 42 years ago; but to King, war was evil, not a solution to it.

--(c) '09 maj

[Source: Harding, Vincent, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (Maryknoll: New York, 1996.]

PLEASE CONTACT:
International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail - icffmaj [at] aol.com
AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!

Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!

Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa

Subscribe: mumiacolumns-subscribe [at] topica.com
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Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing
icffmaj [at] aol.com!

[Check out Mumia's latest: *WE WANT FREEDOM:
A Life in the Black Panther Party*, from South
End Press (http://www.southendpress.org); Ph.
#1-800-533-8478.]

"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is
just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die.
And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about
justice." - Mumia Abu-Jamal

For additional information and to order Mumia's new book We Want Freedom,

visit: southendpress.org

Check out Mumia's NEW book:
"Faith f Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People" at http://www.africanworld.com
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Tom
Wed, Dec 30, 2009 6:43PM
Anti-War activist
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Wed, Dec 30, 2009 12:01PM
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