Some Day
Long ago, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said: “A struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it maybe both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”
President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Originally, he called it ‘the military-industrial-legislative complex,’ but cut out the word ‘legislative’ from the final draft, when asked to do so by Congress. Today, members of Congress continue to depend on war profiteers to contribute heavily to their re-election campaigns and provide jobs for their constituents.
Eisenhower observed: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children.”
Eisenhower speculated: “If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.” And, it was Eisenhower, who warned: “We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength.”
Ike said: “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.” and “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
But, Ike’s most insightful remark was: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.” Our military-industrial-legislative complex, better get out of the way.
Perhaps, Eisenhower considered warmongers to be naive, fools and an embarrassment to this country, as I do.
President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Originally, he called it ‘the military-industrial-legislative complex,’ but cut out the word ‘legislative’ from the final draft, when asked to do so by Congress. Today, members of Congress continue to depend on war profiteers to contribute heavily to their re-election campaigns and provide jobs for their constituents.
Eisenhower observed: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children.”
Eisenhower speculated: “If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.” And, it was Eisenhower, who warned: “We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength.”
Ike said: “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.” and “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
But, Ike’s most insightful remark was: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.” Our military-industrial-legislative complex, better get out of the way.
Perhaps, Eisenhower considered warmongers to be naive, fools and an embarrassment to this country, as I do.
posted by Jim O'Leary | 12:49 AM
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