Why Can't We Have Republicans Like This Anymore?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by EPW
"Oh, he didn't let himself be anyone's ***** He left the administration relatively quickly, after all, once he no longer was absolutely needed... and I suspect his sense of duty is the reason he stayed as long as he did."

He should have resigned if his sense of duty kicked in.

I disagree strongly with that. People who just resign when the folks above them are doing things they don't like are cowards. Strong, responsible people stay in a position of power where they can make as big of a difference as possible in those policies, and keep them as reasonable as possible.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I disagree strongly with that. People who just resign when the folks above them are doing things they don't like are cowards.

Things they don't like...sure, stay.

Things they don't like that violate human rights standards and international law that they use you as a flunky to sell to the international community on false intelligence...resigning time.

[EPW]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I disagree strongly with that. People who just resign when the folks above them are doing things they don't like are cowards. Strong, responsible people stay in a position of power where they can make as big of a difference as possible in those policies, and keep them as reasonable as possible.

I would agree if he had any influence. But you can't moderate a war and Bush was set in his policies. If Powell thought the war was wrong he never should have made the UN speech; he should have argued with the President until the first bombs dropped and then he should have resigned.

[snoopy369]

I suspect he believed the war was fine. It's the execution that was not so fine.

[Zkribbler]

I like Ike!

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I suspect he believed the war was fine. It's the execution that was not so fine.

Then he is not as Ike-like a republican as your "two words" would indicate.

[Whoha]

Re: Why Can't We Have Republicans Like This Anymore?

Simple, the Military-Industrial Complex is Republican now and not Democrat like it used to be.

Also our Military spending as a percentage of GDP has dropped off a cliff. That could also be why people don't talk about it.

[David Floyd]

Ike was largely right, in the sense that the massive military spending of the Cold War SHOULD HAVE BEEN unnecessary. We should have been able to reap the results of our victory in WW2, and invest in redevelopment, focus on new sciences like rocketry (leading to space), and lower taxes.

Indeed, we tried that approach, when in less than 5 years - from 1945 - 1949 - US military spending went from $93 billion/year, to less than $15 billion/year. When we went from a 10 million man military establishment to one a tenth that size. When we went from 89 Army Divisions and 6 Marine Divisions - all fully trained and combat ready - to a force numbering around a dozen army divisions and 2 Marine divisions, with only the 82nd Airborne and the Marines bein even marginally combat capable.

Unfortunately, among the Great Powers remaining after WW2 - the US and the Soviet Union - we were alone in our demobilization. It was the Soviets who maintained millions of men mobilized into hundreds of divisions, with thousands of tanks deployed throughout Europe. It was the Soviets who attempted to maintain their occupation of northern Iran, who built up and armed the North Koreans with the capability to wage aggressive war, who implemented a total blockade of Berlin in defiance of multiple agreements and treaties, and who, under Stalin's paranoia, maintained the most repressive and aggressive regime in the world.

It took a war in Korea and 37,000 dead in that war - excuse me, "police action" - to understand that if we didn't maintain military parity with the Soviets in both the conventional and nuclear fields, then we would be in trouble.

And so, while Eisenhower was, in theory, correct, it wasn't the US Military-Industrial complex that thwarted his vision. It was Soviet and Chinese Communism that did it.

[rmsharpe]

Never mind that we spent a proportion on our army almost three times as great as we do now when Eisenhower left.

I didn't know Ike's idea of a military-industrial complex was a defense budget that shrinks as a total percent of our annual government expenses.

[One_more_turn]

Republicans like him are the exception; more often than not, Republicans' grass root is made up by people like Howard Buffett, Warren Buffett's dad.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by David Floyd
And so, while Eisenhower was, in theory, correct, it wasn't the US Military-Industrial complex that thwarted his vision. It was Soviet and Chinese Communism that did it.

You seem to miss the point -- to me, it reads as if Ike is blaming the USSR forcing the US to mobilize for war. He's asking the world to try a different course (at that point that probably just meant US and USSR). He's not calling for unilateral US disarmament.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I've always thought that Eisenhower was a very, very underrated President. He devoted a lot of his energy into preventing war (its one of the reasons he ran in the first place, because he thought MacArthur would be a warmonger).

[Arrian]

How did Ike feel about the UN?

-Arrian

[Whoha]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
You seem to miss the point -- to me, it reads as if Ike is blaming the USSR forcing the US to mobilize for war. He's asking the world to try a different course (at that point that probably just meant US and USSR). He's not calling for unilateral US disarmament.

That is the gist of Floyd's post.

[chequita guevara]

If you compare this speech to his farewell address, it's clear that Ike does not merely fault the Soviets and Chinese, but the Americans as being all too willing to join in the arms race, to the detriment of American politics.

And the Soviets are hardly alone to blame. The U.S. may have demobilized after WWII, but it really had no choice. The American people demanded demobilization, and when the U.S. tried to send troops to China to aid the Kuomintang, the troops went on strike. My wife's grandfather, still to this day, resents being forced to stay on Wake Island after the war instead of being demobilized.

The Soviets might have demilitarized had it not seemed apparent to them that the West wasn't through with them. The U.S. did threaten to use nuclear weapons against them if they didn't leave Northern Iran, and Patton was running around saying they should attack the USSR. After having been attacked by the U.S. in 1919, and haven just driven off an invasion that was abetted by the West, one can hardly blame the Soviets for staying strong.