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Thanks to Bluesman for the extended Eisenhower quote. Although I'm sure you posted it as some sort of refutation of my comment, it actually predicts the situation which has come to be in our national life.
The vicious circle of the military industrial complex begins with military procurement. Military careers and advancement are made more often by arranging contracts in the Pentagon than on the field of battle. Ambitious careerists in the services and defense contractors are the most notorious practitioners of the revolving door. The manufacturers hire retired officers and the officers then use their influence to win contracts for their new employers. Cost is no concern since the taxpayers are paying. so every imaginable bell and whistle is added to every weapons system even when there is little likelihood of its being useful in action. Divide every weapon into components built in as many different Congressional districts as possible, and local communities become hopelessly hooked on "defense"( the quotation marks are needed since these days most alleged defense is actually aggression) spending. Soon the whole nation is totally dependent on military spending, and elections invariably are blighted by phony national defense questions. The end result is the militarization of the economy and the political system---Ike's nightmare become reality.
To top off the whole sordid mess, much of the electorate is infected by the ignorant machismo illustrated by "dale". While no fan of DeGaulle, he came to his way of thinking because of what he perceived as Anglo-Saxon machinations that had first pushed a reluctant France into a war she wasn't ready to fight, ignored efforts by his Free French because it was easier to ignore than to include them, and a willingness to sacrifice much of Europe to Stalin just to obtain an unconditional surrender. He was a pain-in-the-neck, but to dismiss him as a f***face and equate all France with him is the kind of foolish adolescent trash talk that makes diplomacy all but impossible.
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