Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam, speech was given at the Riverside Church in the city of New York, April 4, 1967. Martin Luther King, Jr. was surely the most influential and highly regarded man of peace in the United States during the 1960's. His speech outlines the history of the Vietnamese struggle for national sovereignty and compares it to the African-American struggle for civil rights. He also outlines what the United States needs to do immediately to begin to withdraw from Vietnam. One of the suggestions he makes reminded me of Dean Acheson's points in NSC-68 to President Truman in 1950. King said,
"We not must engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops" (p.215).
Dean Acheson might ague that NSC-68 had the same mission to spread democracy and freedom across the global.
"Our overall policy at the present time may be described as one designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish. It therefore rejects the concept of isolation and affirms the necessity of our positive participation in the world community" (NSC-68 p52).
These two men are the bookends of the Vietnam War. They both believed in the promise of America and in the need to reshape the world as they saw it. So, that America could remain true to its democratic principles.