Was Martin Luther King Jr. Correct about Vietnam War?

   "I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

  "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." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

  

   In respect for Rev. King, I took a moment to reconsider whether I believe the Vietnam War was wrong. It lasted almost 20 years. Perhaps two million civilians on both sides, 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, and 200,000 to 250,000 South Vietnam soldiers were killed. About 58,000 U.S. soldiers met their deaths or went missing. 

   Count that cost, and wonder if it was worth it. When the count of death exceeds the gains of freedom, is war worth it? And, was the war waged in the name of freedom, when actually it was but America asserting its global power?  Martin Luther King Jr. thought the war but an exercise in American imperialism.

   Vietnam is a communist country these days. Human rights violations include arbitrary killings by the government, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, political prisoners, and degrading and inhuman treatment. Would we have saved the people from these things had we won the war?

   One could argue -- and perhaps correctly -- that the U.S. did not go far enough with the war. The Cambodian civil war, which was associated to the Vietnam war, resulted in Cambodia falling to the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge would eventually kill between one and three million Cambodians out of a population of about eight million, making it one of the bloodist genocides in world history.

   What if America had stepped in and had been successful in stopping the Khmer Rouge? Or, must we concede that if we could not defeat the North Vietnamese in Vietnam, adding the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia could only bode worse results?

   In conclusion, I would suggest it is hard to determine when war is beneficial, and when it only results in death and destruction. I do believe, though, that if you can save a people, you have a moral obligation to do so.