Barack Obama's Iraq Stance Recalls Eisenhower's Cold War Eloquence
I watched Barack Obama's 30-minute infomercial last night, and one segment in particular struck a historical chord with me. There was a moment when he was speaking about the Iraq war and asked what use the money spent on Iraq could be put to at home.
It reminded me of a remarkable speech I discovered while I was writing White House Ghosts, where a president spoke about the costs of the Cold War:
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.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Remarkable eloquence—one might call it Kennedy-esque. Of course, one would be wrong—it comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Tags: Cold War | presidential election 2008 | speeches | Barack Obama | Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Reader Comments
Defending against the evil doers
Is one thing.
Being the self appointed world police is another.
It is hard to justify defending the homeland with our military presence in over 150 other countries in the world, manned by over 360,000 personnel (this is in addition to troops in Iraq and Afganistan).
Strategic closing of at least some of those installations and returning those personnel and their families home would realize a savings in spending overseas and be a shot in the economy at home with those personnel and their families spending their income at home.
History is a story of the failure of countries trying to control the entire world.
Defending against the evil doers
Is one thing.
Being the self appointed world police is another.
It is hard to justify defending the homeland with our military presence in over 150 other countries in the world, manned by over 360,000 personnel (this is in addition to troops in Iraq and Afganistan).
Strategic closing of at least some of those installations and returning those personnel and their families home would realize a savings in spending overseas and be a shot in the economy at home with those personnel and their families spending their income at home.
History is a story of the failure of countries trying to control the entire world.
A PERFECT WORLD...
We don't have it...Never will. Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Take away our missiles. Scrap our ships of war. Ground our fighter jets. Beat our weapons into plowshares and send our soldiers home. But watch the sky - Look to the horizon... Watch and think about those that would do us harm... Watch and tell me that you don't see them coming... Coming for a nation that has given up understanding that there is evil in the world and that the hearts of men are not always pure.
We need to understand that this is not a perfect world and never will be - And there will always be those who would do us harm.
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