Sean Andrews wrote:
>
> > The premise is that the defense industry, but especially profit-hungry military
> > contractors, drive America's imperialist adventures abroad. It uses
> > Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" speech as its basis and situates Ike
> > as an ignored Jeremiah.
>
> I was reading William Appleman Williams' _Empire as a Way of Life_ and
> Ike figures into his narrative in much the same way--as someone who
> saw the problems developing but didn't quite have the charisma to turn
> the tide. I don't have the citation here, but it is an interesting
> take on that period. Not having been alive then (or, honestly, read
> all that much about Ike) is this a really unfair characterization?
When you see attempts to fumigate Eisenhower, remember that he was the president who (just as starters) (a) offered the A-Bomb to the French to use in Vietnam, (b) ordered the murder of Patrice Lumumba, (c) ordered the overthrow of Arbenz, and (d) ordered the overthrow of Mossadegh. I would assume that those remarks in his 'farewell address' were from the point of view of maintaining a more effective imperial military force, free from external corruption.
Carrol