In President Eisenhower’s 1953 State of the Union address, he stated, the quotation seen above. Recognize, as well, that Eisenhower was both the former Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, in addition to being an esteemed five-star general; so then, for an absolute certainty he understood the military at its deepest possible level, which signified that his words absolutely were germane as well as being absolutely relevant. Yet, here we stand, decades upon decades later, and the military-industrial-technology complex has never had more monies allocated to it, despite the fact that America has not had a Congressional declared war since World War II. It would be one thing, if America had subsequently become a country in which every single citizen lived above the poverty level, in safe neighborhoods, with good public educational systems, and adequate healthcare, but that isn’t the case, at all. Indeed, America runs incredibly high national government deficits, of which, the military-industrial-technology complex has clearly been allocated billions upon billions of dollars, that have essentially been siphoned away from the necessary infrastructure and the needs of its own citizenry in order to feather the beds of those of that complex, at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable of Americans.
The disaster that Eisenhower warned us of, is upon us, of which this is the salient reason why America trails so many of its contemporaries in regards to a fair and more equitable distribution of income and wealth; along with America consistently ranking no better than mediocre in testing scores of its high school students, which is further compounded by the rather inconvenient fact, that America’s functional illiteracy rate is embarrassingly high. So too, the good health and life expectancy of the citizens in America -- which is the exact same nation that represents the breadbasket of the world, is extremely disappointing in comparison to other western nations. Further, America in comparison to those other western nations, suffers from significantly higher rates of violent crime as well as incarceration.
America seems to live by the motto of “might is right,” which while being good business for the military-industrial-technology complex, does nothing of substance to help to ameliorate, let alone eliminate poverty from this nation. While there is absolutely no doubt that America’s military power and prowess is second to none; what has not occurred is what should have occurred, which is America should lead the world in being the greatest nation that the world has ever seen in regards to the standard of living of all of its citizens, which it clearly does not successfully represent.
Every armament so made and subsequently utilized is an armament that is in essence, used for a destructive and not a constructive purpose. No civilization of merit could conceivably be built up by exclusively destructive acts, for clearly what is needed instead is well planned out constructive acts to be performed, in order for that civilization to thereupon have a fair opportunity to grow and to improve itself. In America, it seems to be that those that run it, prefer for America to be a feared nation, as opposed to it being a fair and just nation. Those, though, that reject justice and fairness, for might, as if such is right, are doomed to ultimately reap the bitter fruits of such a short-sighted and misguided philosophy.