After reading Obama's Nobel acceptance speech/pitch for escalating the war in Afghanistan, I decided to go back and have a look at and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel speech, and his Vietnam speech while I was at it.  King was such a profoundly gifted orator, and such a courageous moral thinker, both speeches remain not only relevant, but vital today, particularly when a president who lays claim to King's name and legacy so boldly invokes it to audaciously undermine it.

King, after all, declared in his Nobel lecture: "war is obsolete."  Obama: "There will be times when... the use of force [is] not only necessary but morally justified."  Even if I were inclined to agree with the president on the unfortunate issue of necessity, Afghanistan in 2009 is simply not one of those times.

Listening to King's Nobel speech alongside Obama's it becomes abundantly clear that the President has no valid claim to King's legacy, nor to the prize.