"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."
President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Some data:
$4.4 billion: The cost of two B-2 Bombers.
$3.2 billion: The annual budget for the World Food Program to assist 104 million starving and malnourished people in 81 countries.
Steve
ReplyDeleteAs you know I am not a great historian and I bow to you and my son David on that claim. BUT I can't really believe that Eisenhower said this in the way you are using it. How do you walk up to the gates of a concentration camp and say that? Its ludicrous.
Here is the full speech. It's quite good. http://www.quotedb.com/speeches/chance-for-peace
ReplyDeleteI didn't say it in any special way...It's simply a quote.
By the way, I don't think all that highly of "Ike". He had a chance to end segregation and he wouldn't take it. It took braver men to do it.
Well when you feel compelled to be the worlds police man you can expect to spend lot's on defence/offense/waging peace (Pres. Clintons term).
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons we are the lone super power is because of how much we spend on defense. Being the New York Yankees of nations everyone hates us. They don't hate us because of our military but because of our success. It takes quite a security detatchment everytime the Yankee's play in Boston. Ditto with America in the family of nations. I just wish we spent our money more wisely but waste is inherant in government all we can try to do is get it right.
I recently had to write a paper on the sunject of desegregation. Ike isn't given all that much credit because unlike those "braver" men he didn't seek the glory.
ReplyDeleteHere is some info from the Eisenhower memorial site
"# In 1956 President Eisenhower submitted to Congress the first Civil Rights bills proposed since Reconstruction. The bill’s strongest feature was to provide federal law to enforce voting rights for millions of disenfranchised Negro Americans. The Senate refused to pass the bill. Ike tried again and got the law passed in 1957, but the Senate gutted the voting rights provisions. Other presidents would succeed in getting Congress to pass such legislation in later years, but Eisenhower was the first to propose it.
# President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the military services of the United States, but had limited success in implementing it. Dwight Eisenhower spent the years of his presidency bringing the situation from paper to reality. By the time he left office integration was a fact in our military forces.
# When a southern state governor – Orval Faubus of Arkansas – openly defied a federal court order to integrate an all white high school by surrounding the school with state militia to prevent non-whites from entering the building, President Eisenhower sent in elements of the 101st Airborne Division to carry out the court’s mandate. This act, condemned by many at the time, established forever that southern states could no longer use force to defeat the Constitution.
# Eisenhower was the first President to elevate an African-American, E. Frederick Morrow, to an executive level position in the White House. This German- American President also appointed the first Italian-American, Rocco C. Siciliano, as an assistant to the President.
# When Eisenhower came to Washington the District of Columbia was thoroughly segregated. Not only theaters, playgrounds, restaurants, and hotels were “Whites Only,” but the police, fire fighters, schools, and other city government agencies were segregated From his first day in office until the end of his administration Ike worked to achieve full integration in the nation’s capital. Many times he was thwarted by a congressionally controlled city government (the city had no mayor or independent legislative council) and Jim Crow laws. But by several means, including personal meetings in the White House with local government officials, theater owners, businessmen, and other city leaders he cajoled, persuaded, and pressured for racial integration. By the time Eisenhower left Washington it was nearly a fully integrated city.
# Eisenhower established the first regulations prohibiting racial discrimination across the board in the federal workforce. He also established regulations forcing businesses operating under federal contracts to abide by the same non-discrimination rules.
# Eisenhower was the first president since Reconstruction to personally meet in the White House with black Civil Rights leaders for a national policy meeting (Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Lester B. Granger).
# Perhaps the most important contribution Eisenhower made to the Civil Rights movement is the least well known. He was consistently careful to appoint federal judges to the southern districts (the Fourth and Fifth Circuits) who were solidly committed to equal rights. Many times he had to fight southern senators to get them confirmed, but he was steadfast in the effort. When enforcement of future Civil Rights laws came before the courts in the 1960s and 1970s they were upheld by southern judges appointed by Eisenhower. Elbert Tuttle, John Brown, John Wisdom, Warren Jones, Simon Sobeloff, Clement Haynesworth, and others now recognized for their strong decisions to enforce Civil Rights law would not have held their pivotal offices without Eisenhower’s careful seeding of the future with his "hidden hand" approach."
Regarding the world's policeman...I guess we are sort of selective on which "beat" we patrol.
ReplyDelete(And I would have to note that the New York Yankee analogy probably doesn't fly well these days...)
Saying government waste is inevitable is just plain wrong. It's never right!
http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1996/1/96.01.04.x.html
ReplyDeleteFor some odd reason I lost a posting here...but here is what I think I said. Your comments on Ike give me food for thought...but your source, an Eisenhower memorial site doesn't give me a comfortable feeling as to the truth of each statement. Memorials are simply what they say they are, memorials, not sources for study and research.
ReplyDelete