EISENHOWER WAS OWNED BY THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX JUST LIKE THE BUSHES ARE | 2003-03-08
Everybody quotes President Eisenhower as warning against "the Military-Industrial Complex" in the United States.
Eisenhower's reason for going on record with this warning is as old as Shakespeare: "Methinks he doth protest too much."
When Eisenhower went to Europe in 1959, well over half of the Federal budget went entirely into military expenditures. Over half of those billions were devoted to American forces stationed in Europe and their support back home.
If Eisenhower had demanded that Europe pay for its own defense, it would have ruined the American military-industrial complex.
So, when Eisenhower told Europe that American blood and treasure would protect them forever, he also guaranteed the American military-industrial complex enormous power and money for generations to come.
Eisenhower then went down in history by carefully warning American to "Beware of the Military Industrial Complex." This is nice and quotable and American conservatives and liberals are nice and stupid, so nobody understood that Eisenhower was the best America's military-industrial complex ever had.
Does any of this sound familiar?