50th Anniversary of Eisenhower's 'Military-Industry Complex' Speech; Still Shocking on Many Levels
Take 10 minutes. Read Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Speech, to the nation, delivered 50 years ago yesterday. You'll be stunned.
You'll be stunned by its intellectual courage. If your impression of Eisenhower is limited to his military leadership during World War II, and the perceived conformity and deadening of American culture during the "Eisenhower Era," you'll find much here to radically alter your thinking about him, and his Leave it to Beaver brand.
The guts of the speech are contained in these lines, which represent some of the bravest and most prescient words and thoughts ever uttered by an American president:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Eisenhower's fears were well-placed. Since the speech, we've seen a massive extension and consolidation of the power of the military industrial complex.
Hanft has a point, of course. And it's a very good one. But there's also a very disturbing fact: Almost eight years earlier, near the very beginning of his presidency, on April 16, 1953, in his first major speech outside of Washington, DC, Eisenhower gave a even more powerful speech, compared to which the "military-industrial complex" speech was but a mild echo. Officially known as "The Chance for Peace", it is also referred to as the "Cross of Iron" speech--Here is a crucial passage:
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
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 fifty miles of concrete pavement.
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 is, I repeat, 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. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.
There are, of course, various different ways one can take these two speeches together. But two things, I think, at least appear to be clear: First, that Eisenhower was not successful in struggling with what he saw as a major challenge. And second, that Eisenhower's words--at least on these fleeting occassions--weres a good deal more honest and forthright than other presidents since have been.
This is not to say that Eisenhower was free from his own contradictions--indeed, one might argue that his contradictions defined him, and that these two apparently clear points are not entirely what they seem, as indeed, Ira Chernus ably argues in his book Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity. From the blurb:
In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama called nuclear weapons the "greatest danger to the American people." Yet his 2011 budget proposes a major increase in spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Incredibly, President Obama proposes to spend $600 million more on nuclear weapons than did George W. Bush in his final year.1
Obama's proposed new nuclear spending boost will enable construction of new facilities that would allow the U.S. government to develop new nuclear warheads in the future. That flies in the face of Obama's professed goals of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
Nuclear bombs are a grave threat to life on Earth -- that's why we need the president to walk his talk.
They call for fiscal discipline after driving our debt through the roof.
They refuse to concede Al Franken's victory five months post-election after originally calling on Franken to concede a few days post-election (and after calling for Al Gore to put country first and concede early in 2000).
Dick Cheney says President Obama is making us weaker. And you KNOW that if anything tragic happened to Capt. Richard Phillips, Republicans would say, "Obama can't even defeat a couple pirates on a lifeboat, how will he keep us safe from terrorists?"
President Barack Obama twice authorized the military to rescue a U.S. captain who was being held by Somali pirates and whose life appeared to be at risk, administration officials said after Sunday’s rescue.
The Defense Department twice asked Obama for permission to use military force to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. Obama first gave permission around 8 p.m. Friday, and upgraded it at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the second order was to encompass more military personnel and equipment that arrived in the Indian Ocean to engage the pirates.
But 11 days into the stand-off, the US said in a letter to China it was “very sorry” for the loss of a Chinese fighter pilot in a collision with a US spy plane, and for the US aircraft’s entering Chinese airspace without permission.
Good point, Oliver. Republicans love to project strength on military affairs, but time and time again they prove to be quite bad at the whole military thing. Republicans are kind of the Bad News Bears, but with missiles.
Especially as Republicans launch attacks on Obama and Bob Gates for re-prioritizing spending within the Defense Department and making initial attempts to combat the inefficiencies of the military-industrial complex, it would be good to get other examples of Republican incompetence on military affairs out on the table.
If you have some, please share below (with links, preferably).
Iron Man is a good superhero movie. Really. If you like that kind of thing, you should probably check it out.
For this genre, the acting is great. Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges are pretty much flawless at turning well-drawn, larger than life (see: Jeff Bridges' shaved head and big-time beard) comic book characters into real people...or, at least, real characters. The special effects are top notch. The science-fiction element of the movie, including the design technology used by Downey Jr. as weapons manufacturer and designer Tony Stark, and the glowing electromagnet that keeps his heart going, is really cool.
And then there's the politics of Iron Man: any movie that includes middle eastern terrorists and American weapons manufacturers double-dealing under the table is bound to raise a few political questions. So where do Iron Man's politics stand?
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