(portrait of President Dwight Eisenhower by Mike Hagel; hanging in Senator Chuck Hagel’s private Senate office)
Joe Lieberman may lament what he considers to be the shift of the Democratic Party, but he may also want to reflect on how neoconservatives have so dramatically changed and warped the Republican Party in foreign policy.
Spend some time with these lines from Eisenhower, gathered together for The Washington Note by regular reader Michael Beaver. They remind me of Senator Chuck Hagel’s anger about reckless wars of choice in the Middle East, his view that we need a new centrist social contract across our nation, that we need to make America an example that inspires others around the world — not a nation that tries to force feed democracy down the throats of others. This reminds me of the time Chuck Hagel gave a speech for the New America Foundation in which he said posing questions to the White House about matters of war and peace was not disloyal and was absolutely patriotic.
If I was in Barack Obama’s shoes and Hillary Clinton had turned down my offer to run as Vice President, I’d go with Eisenhower in a unity ticket — and because Eisenhower is not available, I’d go for Chuck Hagel. John McCain couldn’t put a ticket together to beat that combo.
From TWN reader Michael Beaver’s Eisenhower-isms roster:
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension. . . would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking. . . is freedom.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only Americans can hurt America.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
War settles nothing.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
— Steve Clemons
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