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.

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