HAYS, Kan. - After leading the Allied victory in World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked to speak in Canada's capitol city of Ottawa. He said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
"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. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense," he emphasized later, speaking to a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16th, 1953.
In preparing to leave the White House in January 1961, President Eisenhower made these remarks in his farewell speech ...
"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.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. ...
"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose."
Pamela---
This is a superb article. It's one that we should all download and keep in front of us daily, the message we most need to live by if our country or our planet is to survive. Thanks for writing it!