To the editor:

After reading Saturday’s column (“Commissioning of aircraft carrier an inspiring event,”), I’d advise your editor to reread President Eisenhower’s farewell address from January 1961 and his dire warnings concerning the “disastrous rise” of what Ike labeled the “military-industrial complex.” In his paean of praise for the USS Bush, your editor failed to mention the $6.2 billion price tag for this floating target. More troubling is the notion that a U.S. president would agree to such an “honor.”

What ever happened to naming a school or library after a president? For an American leader to apply his name to a devastating weapon system speaks volumes about where this country has been headed, if not for the past 50 years, then certainly for the past eight. The fiscal realities facing the new president will hopefully force a change in direction, or if not, the USS Bush will be put to use early.

Ray Finch,
Lawrence