Gen. Eisenhower on the Cost of War (1953) – Implications for the Poor

“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.”His son John Eisenhower writes, “The most fundamental conviction that the period of Ike’s command in Europe and the Mediterranean imprinted on his mind was the cruelty, wastefulness and stupidity of war.

He saw at firsthand how war destroyed cities, killed innocent people (in which I include most of the participating soldiers), wiped out national economies and tore up the structure of civilizations. Its wastefulness cut him to the bone, and its specter never left him.

As a result, as president he kept the military budget as small as was consistent with the safety of the nation. He expressed his convictions eloquently in April 1953, about three months after his inauguration as the 34th president of the United States:

“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.”

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

“It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

“It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.”

“We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people.”

For the full story from the International Herald Tribune (June 6, 2004) see http://www.iht.com/articles/523585.html

For a look at the cost in 2004 dollars see http://costofwar.com/