Dubya stated today that "We should not use public money to support the further destruction of human life." Given his penchant for war-mongering, this would be an astonishing about-face – if such a comment from him could be even remotely honest. (The US military has suffered at least 1,644 casualties to date; the number of Iraqi dead is estimated in the six figures, including many civilian deaths.)
I am reminded of Eisenhower's wise statement that:
"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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
This sentiment – from a man who served honorably in the military, as opposed to strutting about in full Top Gun regalia on the deck of an aircraft carrier – should be as well-known as his "military-industrial complex" remarks. It is remarkable to see how far the GOP's standards have fallen in the past half-century, and how beholden they have become to the forces of oligarchy against which they once warned us.
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