MemeMachineGo!

Eisenhower’s famous military-industrial complex farewell speech:

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. […]

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.

On first reading this, I wasn’t sure what Eisenhower was calling the major 20th century war among great nations in which the U.S. wasn’t involved. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was in recent memory, and set the stage for the Suez Crisis, in even more recent memory. There are also the First Indochina War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the nascent Vietnam War (in which U.S. soldiers had already died at the time of this speech.) There are so many to choose from.

I posed the qustion to my father, who suggested the Spanish Civil War. I think that must be right.