Remembering Ike

        While remembering Pearl Harbor Day, as we should, my thoughts turn  to a man who was nowhere near the Pacific Theater, but was one of America's outstanding leaders during and after WWII.

        Major Eisenhower , was one of several mid-grade  officers assigned by General Douglas MacArthur to drive depression era "bonus marchers"  from their Anacostia flats shanty town in July, 1932. Almost exclusively WWI veterans and their families, they had been promised bonuses for their wartime service to be paid ten years later. The Great Depression had resulted in so many in dire financial straits that they (about 20,000) came to Washington, DC to ask Congress to pay the much needed bonuses in their hour of need. In spite of orders from the President not to pursue the Bonus Marchers to the other side of the Anacostia River,  MacArthur  said he was "too busy" and  "did not want to be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders," then sent the Army across the bridge anyway. It made  a profoundly unpleasant  impression on Eisenhower  and gave him a sense of empathy for the poor and a genuine humanity that we miss badly today.

       General  Eisenhower wrote a letter on the eve of D-Day, taking full responsibility for the failure of the Allied invasion of Normandy, should such failure occur. 

We sorely miss such willingness to be held accountable in more recent  leaders. Watergate, Iran Contra, are exemplary. Later ,on receiving accounts of the horrors uncovered at Auschwitz and elsewhere, Eisenhower  had the prescience to believe that in later years, there would be those who would attempt to deny that such human evils had ever happened.  He ordered Army photographers to exhaustively document these examples of man's inhumanity to man, forever proving the lie to those who deny the Holocaust.

       President Dwight D. Eisenhower said,  "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."  Paul Ryan, take note.

                Dwight Eisenhower said, "I am liberal when it comes to people and conservative when it comes to money." This from a guy whose idea of a big night was to go to the White House roof and grill steaks, play poker and drink whiskey with old Army friends. Contrast this to the current President elect from ostensibly the same political party.   The modern Republican Party has , indeed, strayed far afield, and many current adherents have forgotten their roots.