I just got off the phone with one of my closest friends, who is an Orange County Republican. He is staunchly anti-Obama. Although I am a registered Democrat, I call myself a Barry Goldwater Republican, or (when I'm feeling giddy) an Eisenhower Republican. I miss the days when we had Republicans who refused to sacrifice American lives unless it was absolutely necessary.
August 11, 1954: Eisenhower: ‘I Don’t Believe There Is Such a Thing’ as Preventative War
Q: Mr. President, there seems to be increasing suggestions that we should embark on a preventive war with the Communist world, some of these suggestions by people in high places.
A: All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time, if we believe for one second that nuclear fission and fusion, that type of weapon, would be used in such a war—what is a preventive war? I would say a preventive war, if the words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later. A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn’t preventive war; that is war. I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
To those Republicans who are anti-Obama, I ask them to wait until the President-Elect does something wrong. Right now, it appears Americans are pre-judging our Commander-in-Chief, even though he picked Cabinet appointees with moderate views.
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
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