"To amass military power without regard to our economic capacity would be to defend ourselves against one kind of disaster by inviting another." -- President Dwight D. EisenhowerÕs first State of the Union address, 1953.
DETROIT -- The Republican Party of the 21st century clings to the memory of Ronald Reagan's vastly overrated presidency while ignoring the wisdom and achievements of Dwight Eisenhower, the best two-term Republican president of the 20th century. All the Republican presidential hopefuls wrap themselves around Reagan, hoping to morph into the second-rate actor who read his lines well and used his superficial charm and relaxed manner to win elections.
No candidate did the Reagan evocation act as often and shamelessly as Willard "Mitt" Romney. Every speech he made included his claim to be the reincarnation of the "great communicator." Reagan was a much better actor.
Romney announced he was throwing in the towel last week in his remarks before the Conservative Political Action Conference pow-wow in Alexandria, Va. Romney told the gathered Kool-aid sippers he was only in the race because America needed him.
"If this were only about me, I would go on," Romney told the stunned audience, "but I entered the race because I love America."
More than America, Romney loves his considerable fortune, and losing more money was what drove his decision to call it quits. Worth about $400 million, the always-calculating Romney had spent about $40 million of his own money to fund his race. Once he reached the magic 10 percent threshold of his vast wealth, Romney said toodles to saving America.
But Willard the robo-rodent saved his most vile droppings of the campaign for his farewell to the faithful who prayed he would be the 2008 version of Ronald Reagan and now weep at his ignominious departure. In a slur that would make Joe McCarthy blush, Romney said continuing his campaign "would make it more likely that Sen. Clinton or Obama would win," and that would amount to "aiding a surrender to terror."
That remark is beneath contempt and can be added to the litany of lies and flip-flops that the ruthless Romney has used throughout his campaign. He would say and do anything to win -- except, of course, spend more of his own money.
Romney's smiling exterior and squeaky-clean image hide a vicious vermin whose vitriolic campaign had no limits and who infests the other political rats who continue to huddle around him and see him as a future Republican candidate.
When it comes to filthy campaigning and fear-mongering, President George W. Bush has no rival. Giving us a preview of the general election, Bush trumped Romney's "surrender to terror," telling the CPAC gathering, "This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance." We are sure to hear more of this crap from the man who drained our national prosperity and brought us endless war.
Bush must have sent Karl Rove to consult with Sen. John McCain -- the GOP's likely presidential nominee -- who is now building his campaign, branding critics of the course of the war in Iraq as threats to national security.
At a campaign stop in Wichita, Kan., last week, McCain bellowed, "I guarantee you this: If we had announced a date for withdrawal from Iraq the way that Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton want to do, al-Qaeda would be celebrating that they had defeated the United States of America and that we surrendered."
We know the Republican mantra in 2008 will be the same lies sold in 2002, 2004 and 2006: The war in Iraq makes us safer and a vote for the Democrats is a vote for al-Qaeda. If the American people buy into this, they deserve the war and impoverishment they will surely get.
The Associated Press reports, "A classified Pentagon assessment has concluded that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activities, have prevented the American military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis."
But Bush's blueprint is not aimed at helping the overstretched and overtaxed armed forces. He seeks to enrich military contractors that have sustained the Bush family wealth for generations and served as a reliable conduit for campaign cash.
Bush's proposed 2009 budget, a record $3.1 trillion, would raise military spending to inflation-adjusted levels not seen since World War II. The plan is to spend three-quarters of a trillion dollars, more than the combined military spending of every other nation on earth. Yet again, Bush's budget does not include the $140 billion needed to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year.
While troops fighting in those wars have had to cope with lack of armor and equipment shortages, and medical care for a disabled soldier is often inadequate, no money is ever spared for fat-cat military contractors.
I refuse to call them "defense contractors," because the term supports the myth that pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into their corporate coffers necessarily adds to our national defense and security. It doesn't.
Last Thursday, National Public Radio's Guy Roz did an excellent report slugged "What Drives Record Spending on Defense?" With the kind of in-depth reporting you'll rarely find in mainstream media broadcasting, Roz examined the reality of the Pentagon budget and the political forces behind it. He used the F-22 fighter jet as an example of the kind of boondoggle that seems to live on forever. The plane costs $300 million a pop, and Lockheed-Martin, the nation's biggest military contractor, is still churning them out.
Over the last 25 years, Lockheed has raked in $60 billion producing the F-22. Many members of Congress argue we need this weapon to keep us safe from Muslim jihadists. In fact, the F-22 has not been involved in one sortie in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, told NPR that many weapons systems "have no real value for any counter-terrorism operations. You know, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have no fighter jets and they're never going to get any. So these big-ticket items drive the budget and become, de facto, our security priorities when they don't, in fact, enhance our security."
Lockheed-Martin's political action committee has pumped millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, along with quite a few Democratic campaigns. The return on the investment is enormous. I
n 2003, Lockheed-Martin was forced to shell out $38 million to settle accusations that it had inflated the cost of contracts for the U.S. Air Force. But don't think the Pentagon or the Justice Department caught the company cheating. The settlement came as the result of a whistleblower lawsuit pressed by a former employee who blew the lid off the bogus cost inflation.
The Bushes are genetically predisposed to war profiteering. George W.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush, made a fortune helping finance the Nazi war machine. George H.W. Bush added to the family wealth in his post-presidency peddling arms in the Middle East and collecting millions of dollars in consulting fees from the Carlyle Group, a private equity group with substantial holdings in military and arms contracting corporations.
Dwight Eisenhower was the only general to serve as president in the 20th century, and no one knew better how wasteful military spending could be. When he took over as president, Ike had the guts to slash Pentagon spending and famously warned in his farewell address of the dangers of "the military-industrial complex." Eisenhower worried that reckless military spending would harm the economy and curse the nation with debt.
"What Eisenhower said was true then. It's just that now, it's ten times more true," Winslow Wheeler, the director of the Straus Military Reform Project, told NPR.
Bush wants to cut spending for Medicare and other domestic programs. That's as he prepares to throw even more money to the military contractors to build and sell unneeded weapons to the government and make unconscionable profits in the process.
Bush plans to do this with more debt, burdening wage-earning, working-class Americans.
"Our problem is to achieve adequate military strength within the limits of endurable strain upon our economy," Eisenhower argued.
Bush and his ilk thumb their noses at such restraint. Fifty-five years ago, Ike presciently made this observation:
"A balanced budget is an essential first measure in checking further depreciation in the buying power of the dollar. This is one of the critical steps to bring an end to planned inflation. Our purpose is to manage the government's finances so as to help and not hinder each family in balancing its own budget."
The faux conservatives at the CPAC meeting would boo off the podium any speaker who would dare advance Eisenhower's view on fiscal responsibility.
And here's one from Ike that would spark the CPAC crowd into demands for a lynching:
"Reduction of taxes will be justified only as we show we can succeed in bringing the budget under control. ... Until we can determine the extent to which expenditures can be reduced, it would not be wise to reduce our revenues."
Dwight Eisenhower's wisdom is heresy to the rabble that has abandoned conservative principle, seized the Republican Party and descended into intellectual dishonesty, greed and the moral slime of Bushevism.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 12 2008 |