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Eisenhower Warned Us About This

excerpts from a column by William Frey. November 17, 2005

Heeding the admonitions of battle-hardened generals is scarcely a strength of the Bush administration.

Dwight Eisenhower's presidential leadership was forged in his experience as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during WWII. Facing, in the dawn of the nuclear age, an arms race with the Soviet Union, he cautioned, “There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone.”

In his farewell address, Eisenhower was the first to describe and warn Americans of the dangers he observed in the rapidly expanding military industrial complex,

“The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government……..The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can 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.”

Eisenhower’s judicious leadership and balanced priorities, despite a unified, nuclear-armed, and assertive Soviet Union, averted nuclear catastrophe and preserved civil liberties.

In contrast, despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Bush regime, not content with America’s current status as the world’s sole superpower, has adopted a National Security Strategy which seeks American hegemony and total dominance, entailing a military industrial complex far greater than any of which Eisenhower warned.


You have been reading excerpts from "Confessions of a Repentant Republican" by William Frey. You can read the entire piece here: tinyurl.com/854v9. Thanks to consortiumnews.com. We visit often and we hope you will too.

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