Today is the 64th anniversary of Operation Overlord. (The Invasion of Normandy - 6th June 1944). General Dwight David Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (1943-4) of the operation and later to be 34th President of the United States of America (1953 – 61) said many thoughtful things. Today is an appropriate time to recall some of them.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
“Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.” Thankfully Eisenhower was neither. Unfortunately that can not be said of a number of those who became presidents after him.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who are not fed.” And we could add: a theft from the millions of people, including children, who still die needlessly every year throughout the world.
“Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim.”
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have peace.”
“If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence of suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension…would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.”
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
That is until, as Eisenhower says: “…governments had better get out of the way and let people have peace.”
Dwight David Eisenhower certainly had an innate understanding of what leadership was all about.
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