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Truth4Youth wrote:This has got to be the most whacked-out thing I have ever read if I'm interpreting this fellow correctly:
http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2007/01/why_we_fight_th.php
I read an article like this about two years ago and didn't get it, and I don't get this either.
Am I losing my marbles or is he making an issue out of whether or not Eisenhower was "warning" of the MIC or "criticising" it? I mean that's a non-issue. Of course he wasn't criticisng the damn thing, it was only just coming into play! He was just saying that citizens need to stay vigilant in order to keep the industry in check.
And how is whether Eisenhower was for the arms industry an issue? That's like saying Kurt Vonnegut was pro-war because he felt WWII was justified. The issue is that we have to keep the arms industry in check.
So am I losing my mind or is this guy playing the semantics game and making an argument out of nothing?
Truth4Youth wrote:This has got to be the most whacked-out thing I have ever read if I'm interpreting this fellow correctly:
http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2007/01/why_we_fight_th.php
.....
So am I losing my mind or is this guy playing the semantics game and making an argument out of nothing?
populistindependent wrote:Hey Truth.
What don't you understand, and I will try to help you out. I am familiar with the historical context for the speech.
What was it about the post that seemed whacked-out to you?
Truth4Youth wrote:populistindependent wrote:Hey Truth.
What don't you understand, and I will try to help you out. I am familiar with the historical context for the speech.
What was it about the post that seemed whacked-out to you?
Well, this this blogger's argument just seems to confirm what the people he is disagreeing with have been saying.
And there was really no way for Ike to truly "criticise" the MIC because it was just growing into power. That's not the issue. The issue is that Ike warned that it could gain unwarranted power and that we must be vigilant against that. How does this blogger's argument really defeat anyhting that the anti-arms industry/antiwar people have been saying?
Doodad wrote:......
The prime point SHE was making, ahem, is that certain factions want to use Ike's message as part of their anti-war agenda when his message was obviously not anti-war but anti-fascism.
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
So there's no such thing as being anti-fascism but not anti-war.
Doodad wrote:Truth4Youth wrote:populistindependent wrote:Hey Truth.
What don't you understand, and I will try to help you out. I am familiar with the historical context for the speech.
What was it about the post that seemed whacked-out to you?
Well, this this blogger's argument just seems to confirm what the people he is disagreeing with have been saying.
And there was really no way for Ike to truly "criticise" the MIC because it was just growing into power. That's not the issue. The issue is that Ike warned that it could gain unwarranted power and that we must be vigilant against that. How does this blogger's argument really defeat anyhting that the anti-arms industry/antiwar people have been saying?
The prime point he was making is that certain factions want to use Ike's message as part of their anti-war agenda when his message was obviously not anti-war but anti-fascism.
Doodad wrote:Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
So there's no such thing as being anti-fascism but not anti-war.
In your worldview perhaps but only war has ever been able to end fascism. It doesn't go away when you say pretty please.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
lunarose wrote:Quotin' Dood:
"In your worldview perhaps but only war has ever been able to end fascism. It doesn't go away when you say pretty please."
I think Ike was speaking to trying to prevent facism arising in our own country, to not let those factions get a hold of our society, so that we could avoid a civil war here. No one suggested 'saying pretty please' as a way to end oppressive regimes, facist or otherwise.
Doodad wrote:Pretty please is just my way of offering up the absurdity of thinking that all war is avoidable and thus to be anti-war is to be in league with all who claim to be anti-war but who are in reality "no war ever for any reason." While it's a lovely sentiment it's unrealistic on occasion.
Obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan it could have realistically been avoided.
Truth4Youth wrote:I really don't think it defeats anything the antiwar people say though. I'm a dove and I never really considered that Eisenhower hated the MIC. I just took what he said as being a warning. Perhaps others have twisted it, but I really haven't been quick to notice.
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. […] Is there no other way the world may live?
–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.
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