Here are just a few of the things he said:
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
If you think those are the words of a someone who has not know war, you are very wrong. They are the words of a man who knew war as well as anyone.
Perhaps the next quote will help you realize who the speaker was:
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 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 is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
That last quote is from a speech in April 1953 before the American Society of Newspapers Editors by the President of the United State, Dwight David Eisenhower.
On this day in 1969 he passed away, in Washington DC, at Walter Reed, of congestive heart failure.
I choose to take today to remind us of a decent man.
His given name was David, but everyone called him Dwight, so like another military man who later became President, Grant, he formally changed his name when he went to the US Military Academy at West Point.
He had been born in Texas, Denison, and grew up in Kansas, Abilene.
If anyone doubts his fierce intelligence, remember that his brother Milton wound up as the distinguished president of Johns Hopkins.
His mother had been born a Mennonite, and later joined what became the Jehovah's Witnesses. She was not happy with his choice of West Point. One might wonder if his clear-eyed recognition of the limits of military power was not in some fashion influenced by her perspective.
A member of the fabled class of 1915 - more than 50 of whose members eventually won stars as generals - Eisenhower loved athletics, was disappointed not to make the baseball team, was a starter on the football team until getting injured, and developed his love of golf.
He did not see battle during the Great War, but learned about tank warfare, including working with the likes of George Patton, at a time when their ideas on armor were not popular in the military.
When he went to the Army Command and Staff College in Fort Leavenworth he finished first among more than 200 officers in his class.
He was a leader. He also worked with other leaders, most notably Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines.
He had, prior to World War II, never commanded anything larger than a battalion. He had been noticed for his superb administrative abilities. During the early stages of the War he was in DC on the General Staff, and played a major role in drafting the war plans used to defeat Japan and Germany. In June 1942 he assumed command of American forces in the European theater, less than two years before D-Day. He also got responsibility for efforts in North Africa, and finally in December of 1943 President Roosevelt chose him to become Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
he received his first star as a brigadier in October 1943. He now had four stars, and would eventually have five - along with the likes of Omar Bradley and Chester Nimitz.
In his leadership of the Allied efforts in Europe he had to be a superb politician. After all, he was dealing with massive egos - Bernard Montgomery and Winston Churchill from England, George Patton from the US. Perhaps a few quotes on leadership are appropriate now:
Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
Leadership is a word and a concept that has been more argued than almost any other I know. I am not one of the desk-pounding types that likes to stick out his jaw and look like he is bossing the show. I would far rather get behind and, recognizing the frailties and the requirements of human nature, 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.
I will not recapitulate Ike's entire career. After WWII, he was the first commander of NATO. He became president of Columbia University, mainly as a way-station while his supporters organized his run for President. He defeated Senator Robert Taft for the Republican nomination, then served two terms.
He face many challenges as President. He dealt with the Cold War. Domestically he faced both McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement. He only controlled the Congress for his first two years, but was fortunate in dealing with leaders in the House (Rayburn) and Senate (Johnson) willing to work with him on many important programs. The economy of the nation grew. Our infrastructure, including the Interstate Highway System, expanded to enable that economic growth. He put money into education in a variety of ways.
But he was unable to control the push towards continual militarization. He himself sent American forces to a variety of places - including the start of our efforts in Southeast Asia that would eventually result in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and many times that number of Vietnamese. It was his administration that began the planning of the Bay of Pigs. We sent troops to Lebanon. We regularly intervened in Latin America.
Eisenhower could be decisive. He did not hesitate to act in 1957 in Little Rock, even though he himself was not a proponent of integrating public schools. As a military man he understood the need for following the orders the courts had issued, and he was not about to allow the likes of Orville Faubus to disrupt the public order and public safety.
His choices of personnel were far from perfect. After all, his chief of staff Sherman Adams had to resign in shame. I don't blame him for Nixon, because in a sense that Californian was foisted upon him as part of a political deal for the nomination, one that also lead to Earl Warren becoming Chief Justice - remember, Warren as Governor of California had 4 years earlier been the Republican VP nominee.
Look back at the record. As President he was far from perfect. Yet I would argue that of the postwar Republican Presidents he was by far the best.
And then there is this, the idea with which i began.
He was a fundamentally decent man.
He understood the real costs of war, and did not hesitate to say what they were.
He refused his own military when they wanted to intervene on behalf of the French and break the siege at Dien Bien Phu with nuclear weapons.
He did what he could to try to restrain what he later warned about, the military industrial complex - here is it worth noting that his original formulation was the mitliary industrial Congressional complex.
42 years ago this distinguished American servant passed away.
In the time after he left office he made no attempt to capitalize on his status as former President.
Looking back on his legacy now historians are beginning to realize that he was a very effective president in what could have been very difficult times.
On this, the anniversary of his passing, it seems appropriate to remember a decent man.
Peace.
Eisenhower became a national hero. He could have had the nomination of either party in 1948.