Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Greg
Lv 7
Greg asked in Politics & GovernmentPolitics · 1 decade ago

Has any Republican president since heeded the warning of Eisenhower??

To "beware the military industrial complex"???

Nixon? Ford? Reagan? G.H.W. Bush? G.W. Bush??

Have Republican's failed to take to heart the advice of their most decorated, most honored, military-educated President??? And if so why do you think that is.... and how can we change this?

Update:

koffea: So if I understand you correctly you are saying that the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe and later the President of the United States... who sat at the top of the ladder in the biggest conflict in the history of the world... AND the most advanced military in the history of the world had NO INCITE on this issue and we should instead look at Mussolini (who tried and failed to create an effective military industrial complex) and some pre-industrial military powers... because they offer MORE incite?? Are you high... are they giving away those "top answerer" avatars??

Update 2:

Captain Obvious: I see you dancing around it... not really answering the question though??

I think you clearly fail to understand what Eisenhower was talking about, that if you couple a country's industrial might with it's defense capabilities you end up in a situation where it is not defense but OFFENSE that becomes the focus of the nation (see Koffea's references to Hitler and Mussolini).

So our government spends the VAST majority of it's budget on so-called "defense" but we still have open borders and are hemorrhaging money to private defense contractors.... exactly the situation that Eisenhower warned of.

This is not to be confused with other legitimate government expenditures like health care, elder care, and education because frankly you can add up what we spend each year on all three of those examples annually.... then double them... and you still don't get what is going to the "military industrial complex" in that same year.

Update 3:

Young Hippy:

I know you are young.... but U.S. M.A.A.G was in Vietnam in 1956 when the man the question refers to was in office. He propounded the "domino theory" and he committed the U.S. to S.E. Asia. The first americans died in Vietnam in 1959 fully four years before LBJ sat in the big desk.

Update 4:

Captain Obvious: Thanks, I did look at your link. What you are forgetting... is that this whole Iraq War has not been budgeted for.... has been categorized as "emergency spending for 5 looong years....and does not appear as part of the Pentagon's Budget. So what is $10 billion per week over the course of more than 60 months??? Or should I just take the Washington Post's numbers... they estimate $3 TRILLION on Iraq alone.... so sorry despite your link YOUR WRONG.

12 Answers

Relevance
  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Nope.

    That's why his Granddaughter Susan Eisenhower is supporting Obama.

    "Why I'm Backing Obama"

    By Susan Eisenhower

  • 1 decade ago

    There is no doubt that the Pentagon and its military-industrial complex of defense contractors is a fearsome special interest that affects national defense policy in many harmful ways just as President Eisenhower warned us so many years ago.

    But the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex are only running a distant fourth place in the "fill-in-the-blank"-industrial complex stakes. Let us talk about the pension-industrial complex. You can read a horror story about it every day, like this one about the underfunded pensions of the State of New Jersey. Did you know that the payment of pensions to government employees is guaranteed in the constitution of many states? First things first.

    Let us talk about the medical-industrial complex. $750 billion is a lot of money for the government to spend on a highly regulated system that hits a mere #40 in the life expectancy world rankings published in The Economist's Pocket World in Figures 2007 Edition. Some out-of-the-box commentators think that it will soon enter critical condition as people opt for health tourism.

    Let us talk about the education-industrial complex. We spend $750 billion a year for that baby. Yet literacy in the United States has not significantly changed in the 160 years since centralized government education began in the United States. As I reported recently in The American Thinker: 15 percent of US adults [today are rated] as "proficient" in literacy and 13 percent "proficient" in numeracy." That is according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

    In the current War on Terror, or clash of civilizations, we are being reminded that the war is a failure and that the Bush administration never had a plan in Iraq. In fact our liberal friends feel that the failures in Iraq are sufficient reason to abandon the whole thing as Bush's fault and a dreadful mistake. Get out of a mistaken initiative.

    Good point, liberals. So why not ditch the whole mess of government pensions, government health care, and government education, bloody messes that eat up about $2.5 trillion a year, four times the budget of the Pentagon and 25 times the $100 billion a year cost of the Iraq mess?

    Source(s): http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ sorry but your wrong. as I have already shown. military is 4th on total government expenditures. maybe you should actually read my site instead of injecting your personal beliefs when you dont know what your talking about. lol. you use an opinion piece from a newspaper to prove your numbers. no wonder your clueless. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/90xx/doc9015/Selected_T... a. Estimated. If additional funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is provided, defense outlays for 2008 could total about 600 billion.
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    No they have been owned by the military industrial complex since Ike. he was the last honest republican president.

    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.

    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

    GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796

    "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." James Madison

  • 5 years ago

    President Eisenhower also said "MIlitary power is beneficial to peace by allowing constructive discussions to end conflict"" Paraphrase

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    While I do agree with you, LBJ did start the Vietnam war. But it was the Republicans who took the concept to sickening heights. Peace!

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Sorta makes one wonder why they NEVER MENTION the GOOD republicans like

    Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt

  • 1 decade ago

    everybody seems to completely underestimate all the things that big lbj made happen in just one term. he opened pandora's box like no other president. his ego was awesome but he finally imploded toward the end and upon his return to texas.

    Source(s): lbj had testosterone beyond comparison. we could have done without him. he is the extreme example of president who brought "change." he had the power and the congress, too.
  • koffea
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    we are no where near a military industrial complex. Study hitler, moussolini, napoleon, Qin Shi Huang. then you will get the idea of what a true military industrial complex is like.

  • 1 decade ago

    It was the Dems with LBJ that let the MIC do whatever they want.......to blame repubs only is ignoring evidence

  • 1 decade ago

    because the democrats alway leave a huge mess to be cleaned up

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.