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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: I Don't Like Ike -- shredding the Eisenhower myth Eisenhower’s farewell speech was a long and nearly hysterical argument for the Cold War. He presented it as more than a military policy against Russia, but rather as a grand metaphysical struggle that should take over our minds and souls, as bizarre as that must sound to the current generation. His words were Wilsonian, even messianic. The job of U.S. military policy is to “foster progress in human achievement” and enhance “dignity and integrity” the world over. That’s a rather expansive role for government by any standard. But he went further. An enemy stands in the way of achieving this dream, and this enemy is “global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This great struggle “commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.” Home/Articles/I Don’t Like Ike I Don’t Like Ike JANUARY 10, 2011|10:58 AM LLEWELLYN H. ROCKWELL JR He vastly expanded the garrison state. By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Eisenhower’s farewell speech was a long and nearly hysterical argument for the Cold War. He presented it as more than a military policy against Russia, but rather as a grand metaphysical struggle that should take over our minds and souls, as bizarre as that must sound to the current generation. His words were Wilsonian, even messianic. The job of U.S. military policy is to “foster progress in human achievement” and enhance “dignity and integrity” the world over. That’s a rather expansive role for government by any standard. But he went further. An enemy stands in the way of achieving this dream, and this enemy is “global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This great struggle “commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.” Because some crusty apparatchiks are imposing every manner of economic control over Russia and a few satellites, U.S. foreign policy must absorb the whole of our beings? So much for limited government. The rhetoric had to be hysterical to overcome a few obvious problems. Russia is a faraway country and the notion of an invasion was about as likely as one from Mars. Russia, an authoritarian state operating under the ideological cover of Communism, had only a few years earlier been declared our valiant ally in the struggle against Japan and Germany. But Americans woke up one day to find that the line had suddenly changed: now Russia was the enemy to be defeated. In fact, the Russian government—already in deep economic trouble as a socialist regime—was bankrupted by World War II and dealing with incredible internal problems. The Soviets couldn’t begin to manage the world of Eastern Europe that had been given as a prize for being the ally of the United States during the war. It was for this reason that Nikita Khrushchev began the first great period of liberalization that would end in the eventual unraveling of this nonviable state. The U.S. not only failed to encourage this liberalization, but pretended it wasn’t happening so as to build up a new form of socialism at home. Indeed, the entire Cold War ideology was invented by Harry Truman and his advisers in 1948 as: 1.) a political trick to keep from losing more congressional backing, 2.) a way to circumvent political pressure for postwar disarmament, and 3.) a method to maintain U.S. industrial dependence on government spending, particularly with regard to American corporations operating overseas. It was an unprecedented form of peacetime socialism, designed to appeal to big business, and Eisenhower became its spokesman. Savvy libertarians knew exactly what was going on and supported Cold War opponent Robert Taft for the Republican nomination in 1952. But the nomination was effectively stolen by Eisenhower, with massive establishment backing. He repaid his backers with his support and expansion of Truman’s program. It’s true that his farewell speech warned against “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and this is the part that people remember. But Eisenhower himself entrenched this very machinery in American life, virtually inventing the peacetime armaments industry and imposing military regimentation on the country. His approach was fundamentally un- American; or, another way to put it, he redefined what it meant to be an American. Instead of a free people, he forged a program for the permanent militarization of the country. The evidence for this militarization begins with massive increases in military spending. As a percent of total budget outlays, military spending went from 30 percent in 1950 to 70 percent in 1957. This was the largest peacetime buildup in American history. During a dramatic economic expansion, the president worked to maintain a high military spending level as a percentage of the rising GDP— establishing the modern precedent that military socialism is integral to the economic life of the country. Spending rose in absolute terms every year he was president, from $358 billion in 1952 to $585 billion in the last budget for which he bore responsibility in 1962, a whopping 63.4 percent increase during the Eisenhower years. His buildup was not limited to the arms sector; it penetrated every aspect of civilian life. Our schools were made to feature scary and abusive drills to practice what children should do if the Russians should drop bombs on their heads. An entire generation was raised with irrational fears of mythical threats.......... Poster Comment: H/T Ada on this -- is one of the all-time great 'libertarian' articles. It's totally devastating to the military, the NWO and the hero generals. And Truman! DDE seemingly did as much damage to this country as he and FDR. And remember, please -- the fraze "military-industrial complex" birthed in this speech was followed within a few lines by "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods" -- so he gets zero credit for anything good here. What an absolute criminal -- and he's thought of as a benign, grandfatherly cipher as president backed up by an illustrious career killing krauts and Japs. Anybody smelling gefiltefish on this -- or at least Manischewitz? It stinks of jewishness, I promise you. Only a congenital outsider could be so vile towards a population, and I'm convinced that includes Truman as well as the Roosevelt factor of WW2. I really do not believe whites have ever been evil on each other with kike agitators and bankers whipping them into it and stoking conflicts by backing both sides. 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#1. To: NeoconsNailed (#0)
There were a lot of American troops running from the fighting. But Ike made an example of Pvt. Eddie Slovik. He was the first soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War. :-/
Yeah, HOW noble! OMG, looks like Stank Sinatra tried to do something good for once en. wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Private_Slovik Anybody seen the 1974 movie that did get made?
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