Obama Ignores Eisenhower at Country's, World's Peril

[Klukie]

Obama Ignores Eisenhower at Country's, World's Peril
Saturday 15 January 2011

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued his prophetic warning about the military-industrial complex, anticipating the increased political, economic, military and even cultural influence of the Pentagon and its allies. Several weeks earlier, he had privately told his senior advisers in the Oval Office, "God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do." Several months after his inauguration in 1953, he warned against warfare that had "humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
In the spring of 1961, I was part of a small group of undergraduates who met with the president's brother, Milton Eisenhower, who was then president of Johns Hopkins University. Milton Eisenhower and a Johns Hopkins professor of political science, Malcolm Moos, played major roles in the drafting and editing of the farewell speech of January 1961. The actual drafter of the speech, Ralph E. Williams, relied on guidance from Professor Moos. Milton Eisenhower explained that one of the drafts of the speech referred to the "military-industrial-Congressional complex" and said that the president himself inserted the reference to the role of the Congress, an element that did not appear in the delivery of the farewell address. When the president's brother asked about the dropped reference to Congress, the president replied: "It was more than enough to take on the military and private industry. I couldn't take on the Congress as well."

http://www.truth-out.org/obama-ignores-eisenhower-countrys-worlds-peril66863

[Autumn]

1. K/R for an excellent article

:kick:

[ProSense]

2. Not sure this is a comforting point

...God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do...

<...>

Unlike Kennedy and Johnson, Eisenhower ignored the hysteria of the bomber and missile gaps in the 1950s, as well as the unnecessarily heightened concerns about US security in the National Security Council report NSC-68 in the late 1940s and in the Gaither Report in the mid-1950s, which called for unnecessary increases in the strategic arsenal. Eisenhower ignored the many Democrats and Republicans who advocated for increased defense spending and even cut the military budget by 20 percent between 1953 and 1955 on the way to balancing the budget by 1956.

Eisenhower clashed with the military mindset from the very beginning of his presidency. He knew that his generals were wrong in proclaiming "political will" the major factor in military victory and would have shuddered when General David Petraeus proclaimed recently that political will is the key to US success in Afghanistan. Eisenhower knew that military demands for weaponry and resources were always based on inexplicable notions of "sufficiency," and he made sure that Pentagon briefings to the Congress were countered by testimony from the intelligence community.

Henry A. Kissinger was one of the rare national security advisers and secretaries of state who understood Eisenhower's point of view. During the ratification process for the first Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT I) agreement in 1972, he countered conservative and military opposition to SALT and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with two questions opponents of arms control could never answer: what is strategic sufficiency, and what would we do with strategic sufficiency if we had it?

<...>

Unfortunately, with the possible exception of President Richard Nixon, we have not had a president who understood the military mindset and was willing to limit the influence of the military. Democrats such as Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton as well as Republicans such as Reagan, Bush I and Bush II have deferred too readily to the military. They devoted too many resources to the military and often resorted to the use of power instead of diplomacy and statecraft.

One doesn't need to be a General to be President. Also, Kissinger and Nixon are the only persons the author could find to hold up as an examples?

[Faryn Balyncd]

3. Eisenhower also had enough sense to NOT reduce Social Security.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. And create a 91% top tax bracket nt

[Zoeisright]

5. I see. And was this pointed out to Reagan and Bush and Bush II?

Jumping over those assholes who were the REAL cause of the problems to lambaste Obama is really quite stupid.