Another Rev. King Takes Up Father’s Call for World Peace : Tribute: In familiar, impassioned style, the civil rights leader’s daughter tells audience that ‘war is obsolete.’

In a powerful speech that called to mind her father in style and substance, the Rev. Bernice King on Monday called for peace in the Persian Gulf, saying, “A true dreamer understands that war is obsolete.”

The 27-year-old ordained Baptist minister appeared before a crowd of nearly 2,000 at Santa Monica College to commemorate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday holiday.

The tribute to the slain civil rights leader, organized by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Westside Coalition, marked the first time King’s youngest child had been away from the family home in Atlanta on the national holiday that memorializes her father. She was 5 at the time of his death.

Bernice King holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and doctorates in law and divinity. She recently preached her first sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, in the same pulpit as her father and grandfather before her--and in the same stirring style.

On Monday, King exhorted America’s youth to fight injustice. When she spoke out passionately against war in the Persian Gulf, the crowd cheered.

People rose and applauded as she said she loved the troops too much to “have them shed blood because of two men who have to satisfy their male egos.”

King also criticized President Bush’s decision to attack after a five-month stalemate in negotiations to liberate Kuwait.

“Five months is not too long to wait when some have waited and continue to wait for freedom from . . . apartheid,” she said.

The Persian Gulf War is about oil, money and militarism, King said, offering a long dissertation on the cost of weaponry, compared to the relatively small sums spent on the home front for education, poverty and health care.

King also told the audience Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was armed by the United States, Iraq’s ally during its war with Iran.

“We sold millions of dollars of tanks, planes, missiles, guns and chemicals to Saddam Hussein,” she said. “And now guns, tanks, missiles, planes and chemicals . . . made in the U.S.A. are pointed at our sons and daughters.

“If Saddam Hussein is irrational, then, my God, we must be very stupid. I tell you, all is not well and somebody ought to say so.”