Edwards Echos King in New York; Call for End of War

But can he outmaneuver Obama on this issue?

January 15, 2007
Echoing King in New York, Edwards Calls for War’s End


By THOMAS J. LUECK

Former Senator John Edwards was greeted by thunderous applause in Manhattan yesterday when he called for an immediate pullback of troops from Iraq.


“If you are in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options,” Mr. Edwards said, addressing about 2,000 people who had filled the sanctuary of Riverside Church for a service honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He said members of Congress “have the power to prohibit the president from spending money to escalate the war,” adding, “Use that power.”

Mr. Edwards, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004 and now a candidate for president, said yesterday that the government of Iraq must be pressured into taking responsibility for the country’s own security.


“The best way for that to happen is for America to make it clear we are leaving Iraq,” he said, “and the best way to make clear that we are leaving is to actually start leaving.”

Mr. Edwards, who represented North Carolina in the Senate, was the keynote speaker at a memorial service sponsored by Realizing the Dream, a group whose founders include Martin Luther King III.


For some of those who attended, Mr. Edwards’s speech may have had added resonance because it was delivered 40 years after Dr. King appeared at Riverside Church to deliver his strongest condemnation of the Vietnam War. In a speech on April 4, 1967, Dr. King described the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Mr. Edwards referred to an observation Dr. King made near the beginning of his 1967 address, when Dr. King said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

“I believe it is betrayal not to speak out against an escalation of the war in Iraq,” Mr. Edwards said, to a standing ovation.