Just before he left office in January of 1960, President Eisenhower famously warned against become inextricably bound to the "military-industrial complex." But, as James Ledbetter informs us on Blogginheads.tv, he was aware of the problem much earlier. Here's an excerpt from a speech he gave in 1953:
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 plane 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.
Will ever escape the grasp of this terrible logic, which continues to impoverish us?
I admire Dwight Eisenhower. He understood what was going on, and I think he would be aghast at the extraordinary amount we spend on the military now. With that attitude he had, I don't think he could be nominated, let alone elected to the office of the presidency. It's too bad. We could use a man like him.
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