Dwight D. Eisenhower On Merchants Of Death Like Lockheed Martin

That sounds strange coming from the guy who was president during the Korean War. The American pilots ran out of military targets, so they started to attack dams & watch the water wipe out crops & villiages, etc in a \"wonderous spectacle\" & stuff like that. There was also the overthrowing of the government of Guatemala, the invasion of Lebanon in 1958, overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Iran after they threatened to nationalize their oil reserves....

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"Finally I am becoming stupider no more." - epitaph of mathematician Paul Erdos

Eisenhower made famous the phrase \"military-industrial complex\" in his farewell speech in 1961. The political dimensions, such as Lockheed Martin conducting the census, are what he was warning about. This is why his words are relevant to the current situation. Of course, these words concern the domestic situation in the U.S., and not their intervention overseas, or in their backyard, Latin America.

This comment was made in regards to the building of Communist military assets in the Warsaw Pact countries, Korea and other Soviet satellites - not in regards to American military contractors. The former Communist governments in many of those countries - and North Korea, to this very day - were content to let their own citizenry live with shortages of food and other necessities, while they developed and built military hardware in vast quantities.

You are completely wrong. Eisenhower\'s 1961 speech was not about Communist military systems. The \"military-industrial complex\" he spoke of was American. Here\'s another quote from his speech:

\"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

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.\"

Your distortion of the historical record is breath-taking. Perhaps you are a fellow at the Fraser Institute? Your post reads like neoconservative propaganda.

I was speaking of the original quote - not the 1961 exit speech. I\'m sorry that I confused you. As for the other name-flinging.... well, let\'s not devolve this discussion to that, shall we?

Oh, and as for this;

Your post reads like neoconservative propaganda.

Name-calling aside, I\'m assuming that you\'re referring to my comments on North Korea. I\'ll deal in figures; North Korea does spend over 30% of its GDP on military spending, some 5.1 billion USD (Eui-Gak Huang, \"The Korean Economies; A Comparison of North and South\"). I\'m just curious to know why that is, when the UN has estimated that nearly 2 million North Koreans have died from the results of malnutrition (and, in some cases, starvation) in the past 10 years.

If you can give me an answer to that, I\'ll gladly listen.

Regardless as to what he was referring to as in country, the issue that war and all it\'s needs are met on the backs of the hungry and homeless, cannot be denied! It is true today just as in 1800,1950,60,70 etc. A government that puts all it\'s resources into funding guns and wars doesn\'t have enough of the pie left over to feed, clothe, or provide medicare, education etc. while it destroys those very things in another land. The U.S. is facing those very issues today, in their thirst to wage war and be the super power they are sacrificing all the basic needs of the people at home, the people they are supposedly protecing from the invisible or visible terrorist. The hunt is expensive in lives and money, Eisenhower surely knew that and many people make profound statements after they\'ve lived through war, which he did and their conscience becomes too heavy to not speak about the horrors they were involved in or lived through, or especially had a hand in creating.

To the skeptic: Once again, you are completely wrong. And again you distort the historical record blatantly. The original quote is from Eisenhower\'s April 16th 1953 \"Chance for Peace\" speech. He was not vilifying the Communist/Warsaw Pact countries as you falsely state. He was describing the condition of the United States and the entire world. Another quote from his speech follows below showing this. It appears you are the one who is confused.

As for name-calling: I realize the term \"neo-conservative\" is a gross insult in Canada, on a par with \"traitor\"--but I believe strong words are needed for someone who lies in the course of political debate.



\"What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

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.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking\"

Dwight D Eisenhower, \"Chance for Peace\", April 16, 1953