I wonder how many people would criticize MLK for these comments today:

[ProSense]

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

link

Different war, same tragedy: Americans are dying for a lie; young people are being enticed to fight an immoral war for $40k!

[MadMaddie]

1. 2 Years ago, maybe even 1 year ago he would have been

Swiftboated......and deemed UnAmerican blah, blah, blah,....

But today there are more people that would say yea he is right (excluding the 27% of racist neocons)

Even when he was alive they tried to link him to communism...

[MADem]

2. Oh, they were gonna swiftboat him--he just got shot and murdered first.

Those tapes of him in the hotel room were ripe to be released to a select few, so that dirty rumors could fly. As it was, the word did get out eventually, but it was eclipsed by his martyrdom, in essence.

[MadMaddie]

3. Yea..it backfired on them.

I watched a documentry about him which I have seen before and it finally struck me that he was ONLY 37 years old when he died. He was three years younger than me and he accomplished so much.....it puts things into perspective.

[MADem]

4. Yep. He was a brave young man, he was...n/t

[gratuitous]

6. Heck, last week they went nuts on Barbara Boxer

The truth doesn't go over very well in WingnutWorld. When someone reminds them that they don't have any kids over in Iraq, or that the poor are bearing a disproportionate burden of the killing and dying there, they just spin off their axis.

If they hadn't killed King 40 years ago, they'd have some other little assassin all primed up and ready to go.

[zeemike]

5. I can remember what people said about that statement then

The white war Hawks said he was a communist and wanted the communist to win and was trying to demoralize the troops.
And he had black critics too that argued that he should stick to civil rights and not get mixed up in politics.
The bastards would have to kill him anyway.

[DoggyDoo]

7. No offense, but....

I don't think the people doing the dying are making even close to $40k. The people sending them to die are sure making a lot of money, though.

[ProSense]

8. Sorry, maybe I should have specified

a range: $10,000-$40,000. This of course doesn't include the education incentives and other bonuses for first time enlistees.

But you're right, the people sending them to fight in Iraq are making a lot more.