Nov 13, 2012
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. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. 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.
Eisenhower, as quoted in "The Permanent Militarization of America," by Prof. and Marine Aaron B. O’Connell in one of the most thoughtful op-eds I've read this week.