Reigning in America’s Military Industrial Complex
Overview
Seventy years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his “Chance for Peace” speech, tallying up the costs of United State’s Cold War militarization and comparing our extraordinary expenditures on weapons to Americans’ unmet needs.
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.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953, “Chance for Peace”
Seventy years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his “Chance for Peace” speech, tallying up the costs of United State’s Cold War militarization and comparing our extraordinary expenditures on weapons to Americans’ unmet needs.
Today, America’s $858 billion war budget is at one of the highest levels since World War II. When the 20 year and $2 trillion war in Afghanistan ended, Pentagon spending went up. Defense spending is now higher than during the peak of the Cold War, or the heights of the Vietnam or Korean wars. America spends more than twice as much as China on its military forces; America spends more on war than the next nine countries combined.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953, “Chance for Peace”
