[Peace-discuss] Continuity of US policy

[C. G. Estabrook]

What Eisenhower could teach the Tea Party
By Duncan Cameron
| January 4, 2011

Fifty years ago this month, on January 17, 1961, outgoing U.S. President Dwight 
D. Eisenhower made one of the truly memorable presidential speeches of all time. 
Through his justly celebrated farewell address, Eisenhower wanted to alert his 
fellow Americans to two great dangers threatening public life in the Republic. 
For the first time in its history, the U.S. was home to a permanent arms 
industry. Allied with the military, this newly created military-industrial 
complex constituted a menace of "unwarranted influence" over U.S. decisions on 
momentous issues of war and peace, and for the structure of American society itself.

The phrase "military-industrial society" coined in that speech worked its way 
into public language as a synonym for "the-powers-that-be." Establishing a 
causal link between the military and industrial war-making capacity, and 
together influencing decisions taken by political actors on military spending 
and war-making, opened so many serious questions, that the second warning issued 
by Eisenhower was easy to overlook. Eisenhower extolled the virtues of 
scientific research, but was concerned that within universities, "intellectual 
curiosity" was being replaced as the driving force of research by "government 
contracts."

Before being elected U.S. president in 1952, Ike was a military man. He joined 
the U.S. Army in 1911 and rose to become supreme commander of the Allied Forces 
in Europe by the end of World War II. He understood the military mind and grew 
to fear the relationship between war, industry, and politics. In his address he 
referred to four wars involving major powers already in the first half of the 
century, (Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05, two world wars, the Korean War) and 
the participation of the U.S. in three of them.

After the war, Eisenhower had been president of Columbia University, so he also 
had direct experience with the pressures the outside world could bring to bear 
on the Academy. It is the capture of the supposedly independent, objective minds 
of the American scientific establishment by the military-industrial complex that 
warrants greater consideration today.

Mainstream social science mostly neglected analysis of the horrendous 
implications a growing military-industrial-university complex had for U.S. and 
world politics, leaving the useful work to distinguished dissidents such as 
Seymour Melman, who wrote about the permanent war economy. Many social 
scientists joined the Cold War party being organized by the Rand Institute and 
other Cold War idea factories.

Renowned economists argued decisions were made by markets outside the influence 
of any industrial entity, however large and influential; high-profile political 
scientists concentrated on voter "behavior," as if the citizenry ruled. The ever 
present pressure to conform ruled the career aspirations of ambitious new 
entrants to academic life. In the U.S., it was mainly radical sociologists 
working in the tradition of C. Wright Mills who went on to explore the issues 
raised in Eisenhower's farewell address.

The most celebrated of all American dissenters, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, once 
described Eisenhower's views as "appropriate" but limited. The 
military-industrial complex is the core of the American economy, said Chomsky, 
whose perspective on American society, like that brought forward by Eisenhower, 
highlights economic influence over politics.
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Chomsky sees American capitalists dominating political decision making, and 
calls "state" capitalism that which his MIT colleagues help develop in their 
laboratories on government contracts and which giant corporations then turn into 
monopoly profits. In his landmark contribution (with Edward S. Herman) Chomsky 
explained how media "manufacture consent" for the contemporary military 
industrial complex.

Notably, Eisenhower left out of his address the American overthrow of the 
democratic governments of Iran (1953), and Guatemala (1954) -- events that 
occurred when he was president. The invasion of Cuba, authorized by his 
successor, John F. Kennedy, was being planned by his government as he spoke. The 
invasion of Vietnam, the assassination of President Allende of Chile and the 
overthrow of his democratic government, the invasion of Grenada, the two 
invasions of Iraq, and the invasion of Afghanistan were to follow the address.

As well as writing and speaking about, and protesting of all the above, Chomsky 
ably documented the atrocities committed by the American military in East Timor, 
the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In The Radical 
Intellectual he reflects back on how his youthful encounter with critical 
thought inspired and motivated his subsequent work.

Notwithstanding the gap between deeds and words, Eisenhower's farewell address 
is worth reading today. In its invocation of noble American goals, the contrast 
with current Republican discourse could not be more evident. It is hard to 
imagine a Tea Party candidate citing Ike to the effect the world: "must avoid 
becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud 
confederation of mutual trust and respect."

Duncan Cameron writes weekly on politics and is president of rabble.ca.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2011/01/what-eisenhower-could-teach-tea-party