During one of his early speeches to the nation in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower listed five precepts which he claimed govern US conduct in world affairs:
First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy -- for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation -- but only in effective cooperation with fellow nations.
Third: Every nation's right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
Fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments -- but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
Note well that current US foreign policy has distorted these precepts almost beyond recognition. Clearly we no longer care about the impact of our military adventures:
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 are not clothed.
"Our" government serves the interests of the "golden billion". The rest of us are just "useless people" who keep getting in the way. Keep that in mind when listening to the next State of the Union address.
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