"Humanity hanging on a cross of iron"

[kpete]

[Merryland]

1. Eisenhower was prophetic. n/t

[Wounded Bear]

3. I guess he almost ran as a Dem...

back in the day, military folks weren't very political, for the most part.

IMHO, the last decent Repub President.

[StoneCarver]

25. IKE is responsible for resurrecting the republican party

Without him it would have withered on the vine. Nixon was the last republican who was normal. He was a crook and deserved to be impeached, but he created the EPA and signed COLAS into law for SS. Look how far we've come?
Stonecarver

[rpannier]

40. When Nixon's Generation of Republicans went it was all over

Nelson Rockefeller, Howard Baker, Thomas Dewey, Hiram Fong, John Heinz, John G Beale Jr, Charles Potter, even Everett Dirksen is far preferable to today's Republican

[lagomorph777]

53. Ike was way to the left of most Dems in gov't today

He was a lot like Bernie.

[DrBulldog]

43. Remember, Eisenhower was the last INDEPENDENT who became President.

Ike was without affiliation and was recruited heavily by both parties. The Republicans succeeded only because the pragmatic Ike saw the country didn't favor Truman in 1952 because of the festering Korean war and Truman's firing of the egomaniac general MacArthur who Americans also stupidly regarded as a national hero. But when Ike became President he took charge. EVERYONE - including Congress - in the country knew who was the BOSS. Ike ended the Korean War in a year, he started a huge infrastructure building program that lasted 20 years, promoted nation-wide quality education in what we call today STEM, teachers were almost as well-paid as engineers, ordered Federal troops into Little Rock to enforce the rights of African-Americans to go to college, people who earned only twice the minimum wage could buy a house (my parents were in that category and did exactly that), and many of our top universities were practically TUITION-FREE. I earned my entire state college tuition from summer jobs. At that time - and for the LAST time - the United States was truly regarded BY THE WORLD as the best and most respected country on earth.

Gosh, this story is sounding awfully deja-vu to me. Is 2016 to become the next 1952?

[First Speaker]

2. Imagine a modern Repub saying that...

...or even a modern Dem--with the honorable exception of Sanders...and doesn't *that* show how far we've come...?

[Frank Cannon]

4. Eisenhower was a commie hippie.

Who cares what that cuck had to say? He probably smoked pot.

[Cirque du So-What]

6. A regular peacenik, he was

Speaking out against the MIC at a time when it was turgid with war-lust and profit motive. Who did Eisenhower think he was anyway - an expert in warfare or sumpin'?

[Octafish]

8. Pink and ready to throw the bucket.

The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

by Ira Chernus
Common Dreams
March 18, 2008

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it's time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying "he would rather be atomized than communized," reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of "national security," and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.

From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: "Russia is definitely out to communize the world....Now we face a battle to extinction." On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. "toward total socialism."

SNIP…

For Eisenhower, the point of amassing a huge nuclear arsenal was not to deter war but to win it. This was enshrined as official policy in NSC 5810/1: "The United States must make clear its determination to prevail if general war occurs." The only meaningful war aim, he told the NSC, was "to achieve a victory." He described his war plan as "Hit the guy fast with all you've got if he jumps on you"; "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket."

SNIP…

Eisenhower assumed that a post-holocaust America would be a totalitarian state, ruled by martial law. But he worried about (among other things) what would happen to the credit structure of the country and how to print and sell war bonds to finance the next war if Washington were destroyed. At one NSC meeting he complained that if the President and the Vice President were "knocked off," the "damnable" law of succession would result in the Democrats (he called them "the other team&quot taking the White House. "To assure against that happening, the President thought the Vice President should be put in cotton batting."

SNIP…

And we ignore it at our peril, because it was a policy that put anticommunist ideology above human life, made by a man who would "push whole stack of chips into the pot" and "hit 'em ... with everything in the bucket"; who would "shoot your enemy before he shoots you"; who believed that the U.S. could "pick itself up from the floor" and win a nuclear war, even though "everybody is going crazy," as long as "only" 25 or 30 American cities got "shellacked" and nobody got too "hysterical."

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742

[jwirr]

13. That is the Ike I remember. But he was a war hero so they

voted for him.

[sulphurdunn]

22. Eisenhower

was the last allied commander to actually win a war. It should come as no surprise that as Commander in Chief he would adhere to that doctrine.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

26. After many personal talks with Dr. Herbert York

and other scientists he came to see the dangers of a nuclear arms race driven mostly by the MIC.
How did that work out for us?

[sulphurdunn]

28. The MIC was inevitable

after our victory in WWII and the Cold War that followed it.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

39. I guess he never heard about nuclear winter

[DhhD]

49. And it was believed that being in a Fall-Out basement would save you from the blast. Then in a few

weeks everything would begin to be rebuilt using Marshall Plan contracts. War then rebuild. War then rebuild at the American taxpayers expense. I say, let Europe war against IS and their taxpayers pick up the MIC/Marshall Plan tab this time. Refugees are coming into Europe.

The People knew very little about radiation and thermal neutrons (Hydrogen bomb), circulating in the Earth's winds and waters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium

[malthaussen]

45. Conventional war is one thing, nuclear another.

I figure Mr Eisenhower could do arithmetic, and recognized that it would be impossible for the U.S. to win a conventional war without having massive forces lying around doing nothing. Whereas atomic and then nuclear weapons were a more economical and decisive stick. And let's face it, there is no nuclear strategy that is not absurd, but the genie can't be put back in the bottle. Conventional thinking still sees nuclear weapons in terms of their deterrent ability, nobody really hopes they'll be used. But if they are going to be used, then naturally one would prefer to hit the Other Guy harder than we get hit, and it doesn't make much sense militarily to hold back when it comes to blows. It's easy to criticize nuclear strategy: they don't call it MAD for nothing.

-- Mal

[Frank Cannon]

9. Definitely not a real man like John Wayne.

If he'd fought at Iwo Jima and in the Green Berets like Wayne did, maybe that pinko punk would know a thing or two about what it takes to defend this great Christian nation.

[Human101948]

10. Yes and when John Wayne died...

they found out he was full of shit!

[Plucketeer]

21. Frank

you're a loose Cannon. But I mean that in a good way!

[MisterP]

20. Heinlein whimpered that he was a "political general"

presumably for not waiting for Martineau's magic markets to do in Hitler (or maybe just for fighting a war instead of leaving as a LT due to TB and running the SF writers' division of Naval research with L. Ron Hubbard)

[pampango]

48. The John Birch Society really thought that was true.

"Could Eisenhower really be simply a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes." He went on. "With regard to ... Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason."

Values

The organization supports limited government and opposes wealth redistribution and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, fascism and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating U.S. governmental administration. In a 1983 edition of Crossfire, Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Georgia), then its newly appointed president, characterized the society as belonging to the Old Right rather than the New Right.

The society opposed the 1960s civil rights movement and claimed the movement had Communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flyer titled "What's Wrong With Civil Rights?", which was used as a newspaper advertisement. In the piece, one of the answers was: "For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years." The society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states' rights to enact laws regarding civil rights.

The society opposes "one world government", and it has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue the U.S. Constitution has been devalued in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged trend is not accidental. It cited the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society#Eisenhower_issue

[Xipe Totec]

5. It is infuriating to see how low the Republican Party has sunk

Men of honor and vision are no longer its leaders.

Instead, we have court jesters playing dress up.

[Dont call me Shirley]

7. Stop the manufacture of weapons, it is the biggest waste of natural resources in the world.

[jtuck004]

11. “The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky n/t

[Akamai]

12. Thom Hartmann fairly often plays this wonderful speech and others,

and often reads Ike's letter to his conservative brother who wanted to do away with social security and other social programs:

The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part VI: Crises Abroad, Party Problems at Home; September 1954 to December 1954
Chapter 13: "A new phase of political experience"

"Dear Ed:1 I think that such answer as I can give to your letter of November first will be arranged in reverse order--at least I shall comment first on your final paragraph.

"You keep harping on the Constitution; I should like to point out that the meaning of the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. Consequently no powers are exercised by the Federal government except where such exercise is approved by the Supreme Court (lawyers) of the land.2

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.5 Their number is negligible and they are stupid. ...."

[DhhD]

50. It seems like that last paragraph is the Political Platform of the Dominionist Ted Cruz

and his Seven Mountain Party.

[Akamai]

56. Scary platform, bringing on the End Times.

[RoccoR5955]

14. Eisenhower saw personally the effects of war

He was in Europe, and saw what WWI and WWII did to the continent. He knew that war is not the answer, even as a general.
He saw the ruins all over. He saw the people in the streets without homes, or food.
Eisenhower also put forth plans for the Interstate Highway System, which created many jobs.

Eisenhower was the best Republican president ever, bar none.

[scottie55]

15. Errrr.... Lincoln....

Imagine if Lincoln let the South go, where they would be today.....

Idiocracy.....

[RoccoR5955]

16. I still think, in the long run

Eisenhower was better than Abe.
If Lincoln let the south go, the south would have failed.

[former9thward]

17. Eisenhower did not put forward the Interstate Highway System to create "jobs".

He did it so the military could move equipment and men around the country quickly in a crisis. He was impressed by the efficiency of the Hitler created Autobahn in Germany.

[DebbieCDC]

38. Exactly eom

[A HERETIC I AM]

41. Common myth.

He definitely saw the advantages for commerce. It wasn't all about and only about moving military equipment around.

And FWIW. the Autobahn wasn't a creation of Hitlers;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#History

[former9thward]

55. Your link seems to disagree with you.

Just days after the 1933 Nazi takeover, Adolf Hitler enthusiastically embraced an ambitious autobahn construction project, appointing Fritz Todt, the Inspector General of German Road Construction, to lead it. By 1936, 130,000 workers were directly employed in construction, as well as an additional 270,000 in the supply chain for construction equipment, steel, concrete, signage, maintenance equipment, etc. In rural areas, new camps to house the workers were built near construction sites.[10] The job creation program aspect was not especially important because full employment was almost reached by 1936. The autobahns were not primarily intended as major infrastructure improvement of special value to the military as often stated. Their military value was limited as all major military transports in Germany were done by train to save fuel. The propaganda ministry turned the construction of the autobahns into a major media event that attracted international attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#History

No myth at all. Eisenhower was part of a military transport mission across the U.S. in 1919. He was appalled at the lack of roads and wrote a report about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy

[paleotn]

46. don't mean to be snarky...

...but do you think Ike could have pursued the system with more than one benefit in mind? He was a bit more than your black and white, 2 dimensional caricature. Just like everyone else, famous or not, he was human, thus not completely good or completely bad. Just human. And by the way, in a time of national emergency, moving military personnel and equipment quickly and efficiently is of pretty damn serious importance, don't you think?

[former9thward]

54. The poster I replied to implied Eisenhower did it to create jobs.

That was not his purpose. I am very happy with the interstate Highway System and I don't really care why it was created.

[FairWinds]

18. Hey Mr. Kpete . . You are correct,

as are the other posters, but . .

what are you going to DO about it?

I joined Veterans For Peace

[AlbertCat]

19. the "Iron Cross"

[Major Hogwash]

27. In other words . . .

. . . he was saying that the United States was becoming as militarized at the same fanatical pace as Nazi Germany was during the 30s.

[Journeyman]

37. I believe it far more an echo of W.J. Bryan's speech at the Democratic Convention of 1896. . .

when William Jennings Bryan castigated the idea of strict adherence to a gold standard, his famous "Cross of Gold" keynote address.

It became one of the most famous speeches in the early 20th Century, and Bryan delivered it many times over the next few decades.

The speech ends with this fervent exhortation:

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

[DhhD]

52. Agreed. The Beast is made of Iron and not of Gold (lesson in the Bible); the Iron Merchant Church

as the financier.

[blackspade]

23. That is a great quote.

[whereisjustice]

24. I wonder how any Democrat can rec this post and then vote for Kissinger/Reagan protege...

Hillary Clinton. How can they do it? It's one thing to SAY you want change, its another thing when you vote to keep things the same.

[bvar22]

29. Rachel did a good piece on this:

[zentrum]

30. Eisenhower knew but

….he never did a thing to actually challenge the Military-Indutrial complex.

In fact he promoted Cold War fears, and used the Mc Carthy hearings to stoke this narrative. He made John Foster Dulles his Secretary of State —the man in "The Devil's Chessboard", and he let the CIA be the protector of United Fruit in SA, thus allowing the government to be the enforcer of corporate power in foreign adventures.

He knew but he was a benign-looking promoter of almost anything the Military-Industrial Complex wanted to do.

Didn't the Cross of Iron speech come at the end—when he was about to leave office?

[Rex]

33. They would have murdered him and thrown him in a dumpster, 5 stars et al

Too late by the time he said it, nobody listened to him and he knew it. The American elite demanded a return to huge wealth inequality and the number of corpses didn't matter, still doesn't.

[zentrum]

34. Agreed. And

….many say some scenario like this is what got Kennedy killed.

[Rex]

35. I say that.

Glad to know so many people do too. Brown & Root and companies like them were ready to devour up the middle class. Some in this country like to pretend the highest power in the land is the POTUS...not even close.

Some also accept the fact that Reagan turned this country into a full blown plutocracy and neither parties will admit to it. I think the proof is in the pudding.

[Akamai]

51. "Now it's just an oligarchy," said Jimmy Carter on the Thom Hartmann show on 7/28/15

I remember listening to this when Carter said it on the Thom Hartmann show:

Go Bernie!

[Rex]

31. The last real Republican before they lost their fucking minds.

IMO.

[tiptonic]

32. War

He had seen the true cost of war. He was a true republican. I use the term loosely.

[burrowowl]

36. K&R!!!!!!

[Fast Walker 52]

42. No more war! War is a lie! War is a racket!

http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2016/03/stipulated-war-is-lie-soapbox-podcast.html

[Javaman]

44. this is from the same guy that was authorizing U2 flights over the USSR 2 weeks before...

the US Soviet summit. AKA the Gary Powers flight that was shot down.

He help expand our nuclear stock pile to historic levels during his admin and also greatly increased the budget for national defense during the cold war.

the very thing he comments on, is is also very much responsible for, or are we going to get into a conversation about how it was all the Dulles brothers doings? (with Eisenhowers approval)

Do we need to also bring up United Fruit as well?

So while his 'duality of nature" comes through in his various speeches, please look at his policies and administration while you read his words, he is very famous for saying one thing and doing another.

[PatrickforO]

47. Too bad the MIC's coup-de-etat in November 1963 worked, isn't it?

Real hard to pull their fangs now. Try and end up with the generals ruling in a junta. We ARE a banana republic with a huge, bloated military and nukes.