Before President Reagan urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," and even before President Kennedy told Americans to ask "what you can do for your country," President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined his own phrase about "the military-industrial complex."
That statement, spoken just days before Eisenhower left office in 1961, was his warning to the nation. At the time, the United States was sitting atop a huge military establishment built from its participation in three major wars. This buildup led Eisenhower to caution against the misplacement of power and influence of the military.
Fifty years later, the United States is engaged in two wars abroad, and some say Eisenhower's warning still holds true. While some historians have written off Eisenhower's farewell address as an afterthought, his grandson, David Eisenhower, says it was a speech the president spent months crafting.
"He did know it was going to have an impact," David Eisenhower tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
David Eisenhower is the director of the Institute for Public Service at the Annenberg School of Communication and co-authored the book Going Home To Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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