Evil in Our Midst: Why We Must Pass California Senate Joint Resolution 19 on Torture

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mark Ridley-Thomas
California State Senate
Chair, Legislative Black Caucus

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this nation’s greatest contemporary disciple of non-violence, openly declared his opposition to the Vietnam War.

He told an audience at Riverside Church that ending the war through non-violent means was a ‘moral imperative;’ that his ‘conscience (left him) no other choice’ than to condemn the war.

Despite strong opposition from the Civil Rights and political establishments to his anti-war stance, Dr. King decried the war that was changing the nation’s domestic priorities and siphoning off resources needed to address economic and educational inequities, and health disparities.

His critics urged him to stick to the domestic issue of black civil rights and stay out of international affairs. But Dr. King’s moral plea did not have borders.

Once again the U.S. is involved in an unpopular and costly war based on questionable motives, ambiguous objectives and evil practices: a war, which seems to have no crest to its rising iniquity.

Total funding for the Iraq War hovers near half-a-trillion dollars, while domestic spending for health, education, the infrastructure, foster care, the elderly and the disabled, sustains continuous cuts.

The State of California, often thought to be the wealthiest in the nation, has not been spared as we consider the governor’s draconian proposed budget cuts.

As we recently commemorated the non-violent life and legacy of Dr. King, we cannot ignore the immorality of war that, he said, ravages our economy and “mutilates our conscience.”

Nowhere is that “mutilated conscience” more evident than in the alarming issue of health professionals involved in torture in the Iraq War.