Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Eisenhower, the U2 Spyplane, and First Order Irony

Eisenhower has been frequently lauded here as the best President since FDR but there's an interesting twist I learned yesterday.  Briefly, the reason for support for him has been in large part due to his rational approach to military spending as contrasted by the schoolgirls with credit cards approach used by every President since.  (Yes, including Kennedy.  He didn't pay for Vietnam with Kennedy gold.)

Krushchev was the Soviet version of a drama queen but he was a living anticipation of social networks as he was a drunk drama queen and he liked to take his shoe off to pound it on the table, "We will bury you!"

The Fox News crew was mostly underground at that point but it came out in the McCarthy Senatorial Witchhunts even while Eisenhower was laying out the most even-handed Presidential agenda of the post-WWII era.  War hawks were constantly pushing on Eisenhower to annihilate the Soviets as look at Krushchev, look at the massive weapons build-up.  We must strike to prevent their attack.

Because there may be Hoosiers in the audience, let's be clear about the relationship between the war hawks then and now.  Identical.  Lots of noise, rarely proof.


Eisenhower decided he would find out for himself and sent the U-2 spyplane over Russia to find out what was really happening there.  The photographs the U-2 brought back revealed all the places said to be making military equipment were actually making tractors.

Eisenhower called off the military expansion the war hawks were demanding and the war hawks had no success in causing any more problems until they could do it with Kennedy in Vietnam where, characteristically, they made a staggering mess out of it.


It is one hell of a damn shame the Republican Party has no more Eisenhowers.  All the Democrats have got is Michael O'Malley and he's so white he doesn't even cast a shadow.  We're fucked.


Unless!


The Green Party.  Just why the hell are you waiting.  You can vote for reason or vote to continue the corruption.  Your choice.

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