BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
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Here is President Barack Obama's challenge: how to unleash the dogs of war without having them run wild.
This
dilemma applies to both the political and policy considerations Obama
faces as he expands US military action in Iraq (and possibly Syria) to
counter ISIS, the militant and murderous outfit that now calls itself
the Islamic State and controls territory in northern Iraq and eastern
Syria. [READ MORE]
As the US waited for the president's word on ISIS, liberal Democrats were divided on further military action. On Wednesday night, Obama delivered
a speech stressing a united international coalition to defeat the
"terrorist threat." Meanwhile, Ebola is ravaging Africa to the point
that Republicans say they will back more funds to fight it. Netflix, Tumblr, and others participated in an internet slowdown day. Mother Joneslearned
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22NOV1963, the day President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX. Many in our nation still believe in various conspiracy theories that resulted in the murder of our President. I have to admit, I still have my doubts about the the official government reports declaring lee harvey oswald acted alone and was the only gunman. This is an interesting piece from David Corn of Mother Jones on the controversy surrounding the murder of JFK, and not quite laying the conspiracies to rest.It is followed by another good article by Bob Cessca of HuffPost on what the Kennedy assassination stopped.....
For
50 years, the murder of President John F. Kennedy has prompted dark
suspicions about what led to those tragic moments in Dallas' Dealey
Plaza. Hidden-hand theories about the assassination fueled numerous
movies and books in the years that followed and shaped a national
culture of conspiracy. The Oswald-didn't-do-it (or didn't-do-it-alone)
theory is the granddaddy of conspiracy theories; it paved the way for
alternative (and sinister) explanations for a variety of events,
including the assassinations or RFK and MLK Jr. and the 9/11 attacks.
The JFK theorizing—which, in certain cases, posits that a cabal of
government evildoers schemed the most notorious crime of 20th-century
America—made The X Files possible.
Like many late-year boomers, I grew up fascinated by the speculation,
poring over the latest "revelations" and initially believing the
worst—at one point, when I was 13, my best friend and I called Parkland
Hospital in Dallas and asked to be connected to the wing where the
supposedly still-alive Kennedy was being housed—but I came to conclude
that much of the conspiracy-mongering was bunk. In Slate, Fred Kaplan does an excellent job
chronicling his own similar trajectory, so I won't detail my
conversion. But as I spent more time investigating and reporting
national security matters, I came to the realization that government
officials, spies, and operatives tend not to be sufficiently competent
to pull off the murder of a president (with a well-placed patsy as the
fall guy!) and then mount a subsequent and wildly effective cover-up.
Still, I've resisted getting drawn too far into the Kennedy conspiracy
debates—a true black hole. But if you're asking, I do believe that
Kennedy was likely killed as the result of underhanded alliances and
government misdeeds. It's just that what transpired was more nuanced
than a CIA-Mafia-Castro-Soviet-Lyndon-Johnson plot.
I assume that Oswald shot the president. That loses me many JFK truthers. But the story of
what brought this one man to the sixth floor of the Texas Book
Depository is what's important and probably indeed the tale of an actual
conspiracy—one that was in plain sight at the time.
Oswald was obsessed with Cuba and a public advocate for Fidel
Castro's regime. In the summer of 1963, he opened a New Orleans outpost
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization. He tried
to infiltrate a local anti-Castro group, and on August 9, 1963, he was
arrested on Canal Street, after scuffling with three anti-Castro Cuban
exiles. (More than a week later, he debated one of the Cuban exiles on
the radio.) He printed up leaflets proclaiming "Hands Off Cuba"—a
reference to Kennedy administration's campaign against the Castro
regime.
All sorts of wild plans were devised by
Cuban exiles and their handlers for fomenting rebellion on the island.
And, of course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
Kennedy's antipathy toward Castro was no secret. In the first months
of his presidency, the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs was an
embarrassing failure for Kennedy and the agency. The Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962 justifiably caused a public freak-out across the
United States. It was clear that Kennedy had a Cuban problem.
What wasn't as clear was how Kennedy and his brother Bobby were
prosecuting a secret war against Castro. In early 1962, the Kennedy
White House approved Operation Mongoose, a plan cooked up by Brigadier
Gen. Edward Lansdale that included economic warfare, psychological
operations, and paramilitary action aimed at toppling Castro. The CIA
station in Miami took the lead. (Years ago, I wrote a biography of
Ted Shackley, who was the station chief at the time.) All sorts of wild
plans were devised by Cuban exiles and their handlers for blowing up
things inside Cuba and fomenting rebellion on the island. And, of
course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
But not much was immediately achieved on the boom-and-bang front.
Toward the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy
ordered Lansdale to cease all planning for sabotage and paramilitary
operations. He didn't want any "crackpot" individuals taking actions
that could cause bigger problems. In early 1963, Operation Mongoose was
terminated. Though Kennedy, as part of the resolution of the missile
crisis, had pledged the United States would not invade Cuba, the CIA was
ordered to keep devising paramilitary operations against Castro, and it
continued working with its favorite exile groups. (One CIA official
asked if an exploding seashell could be deposited in a spot where Castro
went skin-diving.) On June 19, 1963, President Kennedy approved a
program of major sabotage with the goal of encouraging resistance to
Castro within Cuba. The CIA drafted a list of targets: power plants, oil
refineries, railroad tracks, highways, and factories. The Miami station
revved up its operations—with results. CIA-backed commando groups
composed of exiles attacked an oil facility in Casildo Harbor and then
assaulted a large sawmill on the coast of Oriente province.
This sabotage campaign was not acknowledged by the White House or
widely known by the American public. But the Cuban leader routinely
accused the aggressive imperialists of the north of mounting assaults on
his island nation. His charges were occasionally reported in the US
media, but generally dismissed as commie propaganda. Yet his accusations
were often dead-on accurate. In one long tirade, Castro claimed that
the CIA was using a 150-foot-long ship called the Rex in
attacks against Cuba and that it was berthed in Palm Beach. He was
correct. But this charge never became big news. (The CIA responded by
drawing up plans to sell the vessel to another cut-out corporation and
rename it.) The US media did not report that Cuba was indeed under
assault by CIA-backed raiders.
But anyone paying close attention—and listening to Castro—knew what
was going on. If not aware of all the details, he or she would have the
sense that a secret war was being waged by Kennedy against Castro.
Oswald presumably was such a person. There was a real reason for him to
proclaim, "Hands Off Cuba"—and, thus, reason for him to feel enmity
toward the president of the United States. (On November 22, near the
moment Kennedy was shot, a CIA officer was meeting a Cuban agent in
Paris and presenting him with a ballpoint pen rigged to contain poison
for an attempted assassination of Castro.)
There are those who postulate that Oswald's pro-Castro street
activism was designed as a cover to hide his true motivation. Perhaps
anti-Castro Cubans pissed off with Kennedy plotted a presidential
assassination that they could pin on a pro-Castro operative to rally
support for more direct US action against Castro. (At the time, however,
Kennedy and his aides were approving sabotage action against Cuba.) Yet
given Oswald's assorted (and mind-bending) actual and possible
interactions—with KGB officials, with pro- and anti-Castro Cubans, with
FBI officials, with a businessman who was interviewed by the CIA, with
folks connected to the New Orleans mob—it's possible to imagine almost
any conspiracy and find a possible Oswald link to back it up. After all,
he was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and un-defected
and returned to the United States—and then two months before the
assassination tried to return to Russia via Cuba. In early 1963, he
attempted to assassinate a retired right-wing general who was famous for
his screeds against communism.
Oswald was something of a Zelig. His past offers plenty of data
points for anyone peddling an unofficial account of the Kennedy
assassination. But in the swirl of supposition, there are hard and fast
facts. The Kennedy conspiracy to undo Castro—via internal rebellion,
paramilitary action, or assassination—did exist. It wasn't a secret to
Castro and his devotees. And in the last months of his life, Oswald at
times was fixated on the Cuban issue. His public actions were those of a
passionate and committed fan of Castro and the revolution. (The CIA,
not surprisingly, would not reveal Kennedy's get-Castro campaign to the
Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination;
consequently, the American public would not be able to fully evaluate
Oswald's actions.)
Five decades later, it's doubtful that the mysteries of the Kennedy
assassination—including Oswald's motivation or motivations—will be fully
resolved. The assassin was an odd and unstable fellow who never found a
comfortable place in the Cold War world. He might not have fully
understood all that drove him to shoot a president and shock a nation.
So how can we? But if we're compelled to make sense of this
history-changing and heinous act, then an obvious starting place is the
not-too-secret secret war on Cuba. It may well be that John Kennedy, the
charismatic leader who embodied a new era and a changing time, did die
as the result of a conspiracy—a conspiracy that involved the most
powerful men in the world and that originated in his own office in the
White House. And if this is the closest we can get to the truth so many
years down the road, it still offers an important—and painful—lesson
that deserves attention: Once the dogs of war (or secret war) are
unleashed, there's no telling where they will run.
The
first deep-water rig off Cuba appears to be drilling on the edge of the
Florida Straits—a swift-water connector between the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic Ocean.
The Kennedy Assassination and Pursuing 'What It Stopped'
Posted: 11/22/2013 7:39 pm
It's impossible to know for sure whether the Warren Commission
Report was correct, or whether the House Select Committee on
Assassinations was correct. We'll never know precisely what happened 50
years ago today in Dallas, conspiracy or not, as President Kennedy's
motorcade traveled down Elm Street toward the triple underpass.
That said, there's nothing wrong with speculating -- with having a hunch
about how and why it happened; whether the plot might've been one lone
nut or many conspirators working in tandem. But anyone who says they
know for sure should be greeted with incredulity.
In his book, titled Kennedy, Ted Sorensen, speechwriter and
special counsel to President Kennedy, wrote, "I must ask to be excused
from repeating the details of that tragedy. How and why it happened are
of little consequence compared to what it stopped."
Too often in these past 50 years, our all-too-human impulse is to
pursue the murder mystery. The "how and why" almost always takes
precedent over "what it stopped."
Nevertheless, like so many others, I spent time looking into the
details of the assassination. Eventually, I thought I had attained a
modest sense of what happened. I thought maybe that it was the Mafia
seeking to regain a financial stake in Cuba, and so, fueled by a sense
of pre-RICO invincibility, it targeted President Kennedy who stood in
the way of liberating the island from Fidel Castro and returning it back
to the unfettered cash geyser it had been under the Batista regime.
Oswald, who had almost certainly been recruited into the anti-Castro
movement, had been sent to the Soviet Union as a defector purely for
show to make it appear as if he was a communist in order to later
infiltrate Cuba and become part of the arsenal of assassination
possibilities against Castro. Instead, the plot against Castro was
redeployed to target the chief executive of the United States.
Whatever.
In the process of reading too many volumes about the assassination, I
stumbled onto some of the more crackpot theories, several of which
you've probably heard about.
There was the book by Dan Robertson, Definitive Proof: The Secret Service Murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, claiming that Secret Service Agent William Greer accidentally shot the president. Definitive proof? Hooey.
There was The Last Investigation, by the late Gaeton Fonzi,
in which the author, a former staffer on the House Select Committee,
ghoulishly determined that the slain president's head was being held
together with a mysterious metal clamp for some reason after the
president's body had been secretly absconded from Air Force One and
replaced with a lookalike. Also hooey.
There was the dum-dum bullet theory, claiming the president was shot
in the head with a rubber bullet, there was the doctored Zapruder film
theory, there was the Kennedy-is-still-alive theory and, of course, the
space aliens killed the president theory.
And there was the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink conspiracy theory dramatized by Oliver Stone in JFK.
While, as a movie, it remains one of my all-time favorites, the
metatheory presented in the movie was as ridiculously vast as it was
totally implausible, involving a cast of hundreds of conspirators, and,
in many places, outright falsehoods about Jim Garrison's investigation
and prosecution of Clay Shaw.
But what compelled me to learn more about what might've happened in
Dallas was no different than so many others. How could a lone, mixed up
weirdo with a bizarre past do this to the President of the United States
-- and to us? There were so many unexplained loose ends and unanswered
questions. Something wasn't adding up. It was like a real-life murder
mystery with the highest imaginable stakes. It was irresistible.
However, what ultimately changed my perception of both the Kennedy
presidency and his assassination was chance meeting with Ted Sorensen.
While he refused to take public credit for his speechwriting, Mr.
Sorensen was responsible for President Kennedy's most memorable
speeches, including the inspirational American University commencement
address, a personal favorite of mine. He co-wrote the president's
immortal 1961 inaugural, which included the "Ask not what your country
can do for you..." line. He also wrote the president's televised remarks
informing the nation about the quarantine of Cuba in response to the
installation of Soviet missiles there. As the story goes, he was simply
unable to author a back-up speech calling for air-strikes.
As a writer myself, I naturally jumped at the chance to visit with him and his wife at his Manhattan apartment.
Ted Sorensen in the Oval Office with President Kennedy.
We talked business for most of the meeting. But then, as the serious
conversation began to wind down for the afternoon, the topic of
Washington, DC came up and I mentioned that my Dad was once the acting
inspector general of the Treasury Department; his office looked out over
the east lawn of the White House. Matter-of-factly, I noted that after I
was born, I lived with my parents at the River House, an apartment
complex across the highway from the Pentagon.
Mr. Sorensen's face lit up and he smiled, "That's where I lived when I worked for the president."
My mind raced, "The president... Kennedy. He's talking about John F.
Kennedy. Of course he is. He worked for President Kennedy." For some
reason, until that moment, it hadn't really sunk in.
Not only was the meeting with Mr. Sorensen a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for which I will always be grateful, but there I was,
sitting in the living room of perhaps the closest adviser to President
Kennedy, second only to Bobby. If that wasn't enough, this brief stanza
in our conversation added a previously absent dimension of tangibility,
of human reality to the Kennedy era and the assassination. I shared
something in common, in a non-professional sense, with a man who was one
of Kennedy's most prominent voices -- a man who, more than nearly
anyone else, possessed a deep understanding of the president's mind,
motivations and goals -- a man who was one of the chief architects of
the Kennedy vision that had inspired so many Americans.
And he was in the White House on that terrible day. He had endured
the sudden death of his president and the agenda they, together, had
crafted.
Since that day in New York City, I really haven't cared about who
killed President Kennedy. Instead, I tend to think about what the
Kennedy administration might've achieved had it been able to fully
pursue its agenda.
Because I wasn't born until eight years after the assassination, I
never really had the personal connection and insight of older Americans
who lived through it. Now, having spent time with Mr. Sorensen, I almost
exclusively contemplate what he and others in the president's inner
circle must've felt on this day and the days that followed 50 years ago
and how utterly soul-crushing it must have been, not only because of the
death of this man they knew, but for the death of what they could have
achieved under his leadership.
If nothing else, the very continuity and steadiness of the presidency
was lost. In its wake, 11 years of comparative darkness ensued. From
1963 through 1974, America was dragged through a war, corruption and
more senseless assassinations, culminating in a crisis within the White
House itself. As a nation we still haven't quite overcome the cynicism
that bled out of that dark ride.
It's cold comfort to think that had Kennedy lived, we might've
sidestepped much of the darkness and death, as well as the subsequent
cynicism, since after all the promise of the too-brief Kennedy
presidency represented the opposite of what ended up happening:
inspirational leadership with the idealism of "peace for all time" as
its primary aim. We lost the opportunity to see it through to its
logical conclusion. November 22, 1963 disrupted and indeed cut down the
natural order of things.
But perhaps now, 50 years later, we can begin to set aside the often
morbid obsession with the "how and why" of the assassination and instead
share a renewed pursuit of "what it stopped." Cross-posted at The Daily Banter. Click here to listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast. BobCesca.com Blog with special thanks to Colleen Kirby.
ON MLK DAY this year we also remember Pres Eisenhower's 'Beware The Pentagon Speech' and are reminded that the constant struggle for social justice, civil rights, human rights, as well as moral local, state and federal budgets that provide more for health care, housing, nutrition, education, sustainable communities and renewable energy than prisons and weapons systems is the right thing to do and we must never give up! I added the Pink Floyd video 'Dogs Of War' to the beginning of this story from NPR with Pres Eisenhower's speech following....
"Beware of the Military Industrial Complex" ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address speech. Military-industrial complex (MIC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them. These relationships include political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training, weapons, equipment, and facilities within the national defense and security policy. It is a type of iron triangle.
The term is most often played in reference to the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address speech of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure.
It is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, and the Congress and executive branch. This sector is intrinsically prone to principal-agent problem, moral hazard, and rent seeking. Cases of political corruption have also surfaced with regularity.
A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs
Lyrics:
Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency is flesh and bone
Hell opened up and put on sale
Gather 'round and haggle
For hard cash, we will lie and deceive
Even our masters don't know the web we weave
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
Invisible transfers, long distance calls,
Hollow laughter in marble halls
Steps have been taken, a silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You can't stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion
We all have a dark side, to say the least
And dealing in death is the nature of the beast
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
The dogs of war don't negotiate
The dogs of war won't capitulate,
They will take and you will give,
And you must die so that they may live
You can knock at any door,
But wherever you go, you know they've been there before
Well winners can lose and things can get strained
But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain.
One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world
**"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."**
EnlargeBill Allen/AP In his final speech from the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an arms race would take resources from other areas — such as building schools and hospitals.
Bill Allen/AP
In his final speech from the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an arms race would take resources from other areas — such as building schools and hospitals.
On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.
Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general, the man who led the allies on D-Day, made the remarks in his farewell speech from the White House.
As NPR's Tom Bowman tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne, Eisenhower used the speech to warn about "the immense military establishment" that had joined with "a large arms industry."
Here's an excerpt:
"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."
Since then, the phrase has become a rallying cry for opponents of military expansion.
Source: YouTube
Eisenhower gave the address after completing two terms in office; it was just days before the new president, John F. Kennedy, would be sworn in.
Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and the resources it would take from other areas — such as building hospitals and schools.
Bowman says that in the speech, Eisenhower also spoke as someone who had seen the horror and lingering sadness of war, saying that "we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose."
Another concern, Bowman says, was the possibility that as the military and the arms industry gained power, they would be a threat to democracy, with civilians losing control of the military-industrial complex.
In his remarks, Eisenhower also explained how the situation had developed:
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions."
The difference, Bowman says, is that before the late 1950s, companies such as Ford built everything from jeeps to bombers — then went back to building cars. But that changed after the Korean War.
Bowman says that it's important to note that during the Cold War, the U.S. military didn't draw down its troops like it did after World War II.
"It kept a large standing army after the Korean War," he says.
America's new reliance on sophisticated weapons technology also helped bring about what Bowman calls "a technology race with the Soviets."
And that meant that weapons manufacturing became more specialized.
"So [for] a company like Ford, going from cars to jeeps is one thing; cars to missiles is quite another," Bowman says.
In an effort to control the expansion of the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower consistently sought to cut the Pentagon's budget.
The former general wanted a budget the country could afford, Bowman says. He upset all the military services with his budget cuts, especially the Air Force.
Citing another quote from Eisenhower — this one from another speech on military spending — Bowman says, "The jet plane that roars overhead costs three quarters of a million dollars. That’s more than a man will make in his lifetime. What world can afford this kind of thing for long?"
In today's government, Eisenhower has a fan in his fellow Kansan Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — who keeps a portrait of the former general in his office at the Pentagon, Bowman says.
Speaking at the Eisenhower Library last year, Gates talked about America's insatiable appetite for more and more weapons:
"Does the number of warships we have, and are building, really put America at risk, when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined — 11 of which are our partners and allies?
Is it a dire threat that by 2020, the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?
These are the kinds of questions Eisenhower asked as commander-in-chief. They are the kinds of questions I believe he would ask today."
But, Bowman says, it has only become more difficult to control the size of the nation's military industry.
First, "there are only a handful of defense giants," he says, "which means you can't shop around for a better price."
And companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are also adept at both lobbying and marketing to promote their interests.
Bowman says, "they also spread the jobs around the country, to lock in political support."
Gates has also discussed the difficulty of cutting military spending:
"What it takes is the political will and willingness, as Eisenhower possessed, to make hard choices — choices that will displease powerful people both inside the Pentagon, and out."
Bowman says that some industry observers believe that "the one thing that could create that political will is the nation's huge deficit." Only that might force cuts in the overall defense budget.
Transcript of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961)
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we which to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
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.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII
So-in this my last good night to you as your President-I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find somethings worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I-my fellow citizens-need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing inspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
