Why We Fight (15 of 48)

Why We Fight

MAN: Once upon a time, your hometown was safe, but not now.
It is possible for a rocket to strike your home right now, today.
Right now.
And what defense remains?
Strength.
Strength, ready if we need it.
JOHN EISENHOWER: When my dad first became president, he came in at the real beginning of the third nuclear age I think we have to put the 1950s into perspective.
We look back today and we think the 1950s was a period of Elvis Presley and poodle skirts, but, in fact, it was a very dangerous period of time.

Defense budgets throughout the western world doubled or tripled in the four years between '48 and '52.
MAN: The Soviets are out-producing America's aircraft factories.
DYER: There is a threat, but we can't measure how much is enough defense spending to stop the Soviet Union.
So by the time Eisenhower is president, there is a huge, new flow of cash into defense industries.
SUSAN EISENHOWER: He was the first to acknowledge that a permanent military establishment would be required during this period.
But then, unless we could find some kind of breakthrough, that, in fact, it would end up creating a terrible cost.
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER: The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: A modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
"It is two electric power plants, "each serving a town of 60,000 population "It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals."
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
"We pay for a single destroyer with new homes "that could have housed more than 8,000 people."
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.