 I'm Eddie Glaude, I'm a professor of religion in African American Studies and chair of the African American Studies department here at Princeton University and the author of Democracy in Black, How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. In so many ways, the work of the Iraq war tribunal echoes a sentiment voiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his last year of life. When we look at his most important, I think one of his most important texts, where do we go from here? Chaos of community. He laid out three, the kind of three triples, triple evils in some ways, right? That is militarism, capitalism, and racism. And he said that we had to in some significant way address all three, if we're going to in some significant way liberate black people, not only in the United States, but black and brown people around the world, oppressed people around the world. So it's important that we understand the relationship between what's happening on the domestic front and what's happening in the world around us. We can't have domestic programs that will address the impoverished community. We can't have domestic programs that will ensure an adequate social safety net for the most vulnerable among us. We can't have a robust conception of the public good if we have a militarized understanding of our country where we think we can bomb people into oblivion, where we deploy our military to protect private interest, where in some significant way our interest, our imperial interest will undermine the quality of life of other people around the globe. And you combine that with this relentless pursuit of profit, this relentless pursuit of surplus value that leads to the conclusion that some people are disposable as we engage in the relentless pursuit of profit and we deploy our military to support those efforts. So Dr. King, working in 1967, speaking in 1967, working to end the Vietnam War, working to really fundamentally reorganize and transform the way in which we think of our societies today by arguing for a revolution of values, where what we think matters most is fundamentally the quality of life and the dignity of every person called for a link, a connection between understanding of domestic policy and our fight against your U.S. imperial policy. And this leads me to the second point that we need in some significant way the Iraq war tribunal to kind of get us to look outward to kind of turn our attention away from the kind of naval gazing that is really rooted in this belief, this false belief that America is the shining city on the hill, a beacon of freedom. We have to begin to understand the evils that our country actually engages in around the world. And in order for us to do that, we have to see the connection between the tear gas canisters deployed on the activists in Ferguson and the tear gas canisters deployed on those Palestinians in the West Bank. We have to begin to see the connection of our struggle right here at home with the connection with those struggles across the globe. We have to understand that the water protectors in North Dakota are fighting a battle that's similar to those who are fighting for water in the Middle East, who are fighting around environmental questions and issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, right? If we look outward, we can begin to see that we actually outnumber those who are on the side of corporate interests, who are on the side of U.S. military power, who are on the side of greed. And if so, I think the importance of the Iraq war tribunal, to my mind, the importance of the Iraq war tribunal is to get us to see ourselves in solidarity with all the people, the oppressed peoples around the globe. But in order for us to do this in a genuine way, I think there's a third part. We have to confront the ugliness of who we are. We can't live the illusion, as I said earlier, that we're the shining city on the hill, that we are a beacon of freedom, right? An embodiment of light. We have to confront the darkness that is an inherent part of who we are and who we actually, I should put it this way, who we are and confront what we have done. And this will involve, I think, an honest confrontation with war crimes and its honest confrontation with the blood stains that's on our soul and on our hands. So I think we need a commission of truth and accountability around the Iraq war to expose the mendacity, the lies that led to the slaughter, not only of the men and women here in the United States, but so many millions in Iraq. And it's only when we confront the ugliness of who we are to look ourselves squarely in the face where we open up the possibility for a different future, a different pathway. So like Dr. King said in 1967, we have to understand the connection between militarism, capitalism and racism. We have to understand our connection with all the oppressed people around the globe. And we have to honestly confront the ugliness that we ourselves are complicit in. Unless we do all three of those things, we will never, in some significant way, change the course of this nation. But if we dare to do all three of these things, then perhaps we can imagine a brighter future for our children and our children's children.