Eisenhower note has lessons for Bush and Co

[JoFerret]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-pe.column06jun06,0,728066.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

....
The note is eloquent ....

One sentence has the ring of what the Bush administration has been saying about its war: "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available."

....

But the ending is not heard today: "If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."
....

So much has gone wrong in that war, but none of the people who led us there, on false pretenses, has a word of apology. The spirit that made Eisenhower feel compelled to prepare such a note does not seem to exist among them.....


And where have these people taken us? Where have George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell (yes, him too) and their heralds taken America?

....
When Eisenhower launched the attack on Normandy on June 6, 1944, it was a dark and daunting challenge..... The apology he was prepared to speak but never had to was eloquent and honest.

This is what always seems to be missing from the pronouncements and explanations of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their supporters. Instead, one hears the stridency of ideologues and men who believe that they are doing God's work.

God help us.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Very powerful...

A good reminder on this anniversary that this nation has not always been led by self-aggrandizing profiteers bent on conquest.

[JoFerret]

2. I can't stand their appropriation

of our collective history.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. That's something that angers me deeply, as well...

It's one thing to fluff up their own legacies by embellishment, but to attack and degrade the legacies of so many of our heroes is, to paraphrase Crashcart, "beyond the pale." What they've tried to do to FDR (for years now) and his legacy (as well as Eleanor's) has been shameful.:grr:

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Giants walked the earth then...

and we rose to a challenge never seen before, and we hope we will never see again.

There are no Hitlers, Stalins, or Tojos out there now. Just pale shadows of those evils. And these miserable failures running the show here, boxing those shadows, are not fit to stand in the shadows of Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, or Churchill.

These are mean, tiny little people playing a game they do not understand and are not very good at.

[jmcgowanjm]

6. The Greatest Challenge to Humanity lies directly before us

World Grain supply at 59 days.
Mr. Brown thinks that the drop in Chinese grain production
will soon cause the country to enter world food markets in a
big way, driving up prices in much the same way that the
Soviets did in the early 1970s when they cornered the U.S.
grain supply.

And Brown doesn't correlate his studies with peakoil
issues.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040522/FAMINE22//?query=GRAIN+HARVEST


CALGARY (CP) - Conventional natural gas production
in
Alberta likely peaked three years ago and a yearly
decline
of about 2.5 per cent should be expected, the
province's
energy regulator said Thursday in its annual
reserves
report.

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html?id=401891d9-dc30-4ecf-89ac-7d083a3896bf

So you can forget about tar sands production filling
the oil demand gap.
Not enough water, not enough gas.

And talking about lions reminds me of an African proverb:

Only when lions become writers will hunters no longer
be heroes.

[molly]

5. I saw part of Eisenhower's biography yesterday

on A&E. He debated whether to run as a pug or a DEM. I really have a lot more respect for the man since watching his bio. He had vision and COMPASSION.

I also saw Tom Selleck portray him.

[indepat]

7. My local Scripps Howard paper still publishes LTTE screeds parroting

anyone who disagrees with anything this president does, no matter how much the world considers it illegal, immoral, unjust, inhumane, is un-American, unpatriotic, traitorous, to wit: the enemy.

[Zynx]

8. Eisenhower was one of the great men of our time.

[JoFerret]

9. How can that be?

....he failed to hound gays in the military and committed adultery. In today's climate of hypocrisy and Ashcroftian purity he would have to toe the line of sanctimony to make it as a Republican.

[rfkrocks]

10. One more lesson for Shrub

Qutoing Ike in Stephen Ambrose bio "a bankrupt nation is a defenseless nation"-with the plundering of the fed treasury under shrub at the same time streching our military to the limit (we do have to replace the hardware used to "win" our preemptive war in Iraq) we are that bankrupt nation- cutting taxes while pursuing military adventures and not even counting civilan deaths-was the opposite of the way Ike delt with his issues-

[Jade Fox]

11. I propose a new term: Eisenhower Republican

"I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because
once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will
stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone."

--Dwight Eisenhower