What King Might Say Today

Dear Mr. President,

I believe that you are doing your best for all of us.  And I believe that you are a good and decent man, a politician in the best sense, and a citizen of a moral universe.

In that spirit, I beg you to reconsider and then quickly reverse your administration's policy around drone attacks and assassinations.  Terrorism, as you surely know, involves the use of horrific violence to control, intimidate and enrage civilian populations.  Is there really any doubt that American drone attacks do exactly this?  Is there any doubt that they have fanned flames of hatred and distrust around the world?  Is there any doubt that drone attacks--like Bush-era torture--are an affront to the very American values you, Mr. President, so eloquently espouse?

This morning I walked past Riverside Church in Manhattan.  I recalled, as I often do, the historic address in 1967 in which Martin Luther King, Jr. "came out" against the Vietnam War.  Read that address, Mr. President.  I think you'll get a lot out of it.  King embraces American values in denouncing violence against the Vietnamese people, in condemning our immoral use of power and weaponry.   It seems so relevant.  And you, Mr. President, are in so many ways an embodiment of King's legacy.  It's time to invoke it--and turn from the ugly and immoral use of drones.


Just in case, the link below catalogues the awful carnage.  And it goes farther--insisting we link out outrage around what's happened in Boston this week to our resistance to this terrible use of American power.
http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/the-boston-marathon-and-u-s-drone-attacks-a-tale-of-two-terrorisms/
I urge you.  In the name of God.  In the name of all that's good in this country.  Let's turn back.

Dave Grishaw-Jones
4.17.31