To the Editor:
Re “What Ike Got Right” (Op-Ed, Dec. 14):
James Ledbetter does well in reminding us of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address as its 50th anniversary approaches. He need not worry about the military-industrial complex. America is no garrison state and will not become one.
What we do need to worry about is the rise of a new complex that threatens to be much more dangerous and harmful. That is the “financial-political complex,” with its two-way traffic between Washington and Wall Street, enriching its players to the detriment of our country.
Garry S. Sklar
North Woodmere, N.Y., Dec. 14, 2010
To the Editor:
As mentioned in the Op-Ed article, “we continue to spend more on the military than the countries with the next 15 largest military budgets combined.”
In one of Eisenhower’s first speeches as president, in 1953, he said:
“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 heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. . . . 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 more than 8,000 people.”
He proposed universal disarmament. Regardless of our party affiliation, maybe it is time for us to listen to Ike. The military-industrial complex is stealing from the future of all of our grandchildren.
S. Norman Reich
Salisbury, Conn., Dec. 15, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 