January 18, 2011
Yesterday was not only Martin Luther King Day, it was also the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's farewell address in which he warned against the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex. Plaudits for Ike seemed to be breaking out everywhere I turned.
NPR's Morning Edition and On Point ran stories on him ( You can access the first here and the second here. The complete text of the speech is available here.)
Quaker activist and commentator Chuck Fager sent around favorable comments about Eisenhower avoiding nuclear war during the height of Cold War tension.
Andrew Bacevich's latest article in The Atlantic, The Tyrany of Defense Inc., (click here) extolled Ike's foresight and lambasted our costly national security state.
And in my American Studies class, I was segueing into my annual pitch regarding Ike's prescient warning.
Fifty years following the speech, with staggering, wasteful military expenditures dwarfing those of the world's other nations (click here for international comparisons ), we have neither peace nor prosperity. Nor do we seem to have the critical mass of "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" that Eisenhower hoped would "compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
However, we really have no choice but to press the case against maintaining these ridiculous levels of military spending. By March 4, Congress needs to finalize the US budget for 2011. The current military authorization bill calls for $725,000,000,000 in new spending. (Note: this does not include the continuing costs, such as veterans' medical care, associated with prior wars.) Please call or write your representative and senator and ask for reductions in defense expenditures such as those described in the recent spate of proposals summarized by Laicie Olson of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (available here.) Billions need to be cut from military spending and reinvested into productive new technologies and vitally needed social programs.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For further insights from Eisenhower, consider the quotation below from a 1953 speech.
–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953/ (From: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001660)
Gen. Eisenhower speaks with soldiers of the 101st Airborne on the eve of D-Day. If anyone knew the costs of war, it was Ike.
No comments:
Post a Comment