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Monday, July 04, 2011
A terrific book well worth reading (and pondering about)
Sandy Levinson
I just finished a new book by David Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President's Year of Crisis--Suez and the Brink of War (Simon and Schuster). I can't recommend it highly enough, not least bccause it's a real page turner, even if one knows the outcome (i.e., World War III doesn't break out as the result of Soviet intervention in the Suez crisis). But it also has extraordinary resonance with regard to our situation today. Let me suggest a number of things well worth thinking about:
Comments:
Republican demogoguery on communism, and the Democrats' reaction to that, caused as much harm to the country as the reaction by Bush to 9/11. We should be grateful Eisenhower was immune, his nutcase Sec'y of State notwithstanding.
As usual, Joe asks a good question, since one of Ike's downsides (for liberals) was his support of coups in Guatemala and Iran. I presume that he justified both as, first, part of resisting Communism and, secondly, as "local" coups (even if supported by the CIA) rather than involving the overt use of American military force. Similarly, he seemingly signed off on the Bay of Pigs project, and we'll never know if, unlike Kennedy, he would have committed American force to the insurgents upon their spectacular failure.
Ike was scarecly a perfect president, but I do think that, all in all, we were probably very well served by his leadership. Of course, one of the realities of today's Republican Party is that Ike would scarcely fit in. One of the other things that comes through in the book, for example, was hie genuine commitment to strenghtening the United Nations. sandy
Thanks for the reply. I think the overall discussion is fine but the Libya reference w/o citing the "alternatives" seemed a bit incomplete. The library has the book & I will check it out.
1952 was the first federal election in which I voted. Here in the Boston area there was a recognition of Nixon as villain. As for Ike, he was indeed a war hero and as such was wooed by both parties for 1952. So there was recognition of his hero status and appeal to voters. His campaign promise on Korea was important to the voting public whose sons were subject to the draft. As to Nixon as his VP, is it clear that this was Ike's choice? Nixon in CA campaigns for the House and the Senate was as far right as could be at the time. Nixon may have been selected to satisfy the base Republican base.
Did Ike have any idea just how progressive Earl Warren would be? It would seem he did not, based upon his subsequent statements of his mistake with that appointment. But maybe he did. By the Bybee [expletives deleted], it seems to be a claim of "Rehabilitating Lochner" (aka "Rehabilitating Much Ado About Nothing") that progressive actions of the Warren Court may have been attributable to the Lochner supporting Justices and not the progressive Justices in the Lochner Era. Regarding Egypt, perhaps Ike was following the line established by FDR on protecting America's energy sources, keeping in mind the Cold War and preventing it from getting hot. And I'm surprised Sandy did not mention Ike's farewell speech in 1961 on the military-industrial complex that might have had in mind the events Ike faced in 1956. Back in 1956, I was a US Army draftee, paying my dues following deferments during the Korean Conflict. During the Egypt crisis, my fellow draftees and I were troubled that our peacetime stint would send us there. I took the liberty of penning a parody of "You Belong to Me" with its "See the Pyramids Along the Nile" by adding lines such as: "while serving with the rank and file," "spend your weekends in Alexandria, riding on a camel not a car, with those Arab girls you can far, while performing your duty." [I can hear Jo Stafford's lilting voice even now.] As to Ike's illness, perhaps what kept him going was the thought of Nixon at the trigger. I recall when Nixon had his problems as the 1956 campaign began when there was some question whether Nixon should be on the GOP ticket, someone at a press conference asked Ike about any Nixon redeeming features, responding (in effect) "give me a couple of weeks to think about it."
Eisenhower apparently believed as I do that the Declaration of War Clause only requires declarations for offensive wars and that a declaration is moot once an enemy attacks us and we are in de facto war.
It is also interesting to note that Dubya was even more of a Whig than Eisenhower in going to war, requesting Congress' authorization to go to war in both offense (Iraq) and after we were attacked (Afghanistan). Contrast this with Clinton in Bosnia/Kosovo and Obama in Libya & Somalia. (Yes, we have boots on the ground to go along with our drone attacks in Somalia).
With regard to Mr. DePalma's last post, much depends on what one means by "us." One consequence of what Washington called "entangling alliances" is that the United States, thanks to Bill Clinton and a supine Congress, is apparently supposed to consider an attack on Budapest or Bucharest an attack on the American heartland, with attendant unilateral authority to the Commander-in-Chief to do whatever he/she believes best.
Sandy:
Speaking of supine Congresses, the Senate is considering a bill to approve the Libya War after the President started the war and after President blew off the WPR.
If Congress genuinely thinks our policy in Libya serves the national interest (however defined), then they are not being "supine" in endorsing it. It's a real dilemma as to what exactly Congress is supposed to do when faced with Executive overreaching with regard to policies Congress in fact supports. Impeachment would make sense if the policy were thought to be disastrous (as well as illegal), but it really doesn't have any purchase in this case, even among militant anti-Obamites who hold public office.
Sandy:
We definitely disagree on this one. From my POV, the Senate will be ratifying the President's unconstitutional act of waging offensive war without the required declaration if it approves of the illegal war after the fact. What makes this worse is that Obama blew off Congress in favor of seeking UN and NATO approval. If the Senate approves this behavior, the Declaration of War Clause will effectively become a nullity.
If the Senate approves this behavior, the Declaration of War Clause will effectively become a nullity.
# posted by Bart DePalma : 3:51 PM You seemed to have no problem with that when Cheney/Bush were lying their way into Iraq.
BB:
For the purposes of this thread, Bush sought and received a AUMF from Congress to go to war. Even if Bush was the devil incarnate you assume, he followed the Constitution.
Blankshot, lying your way into a war is not "following the Constitution".
In any case, your problem now is that the people who Obama "blew off" also happen to support what he is doing.
BB:
The only concern the GOP has with pulling the plug in Libya is leaving our NATO allies in the lurch. If this was an Obama only operation, the House would have massively voted to defund the war with a coalition of anti-military Dems and almost all the GOP majority.
The original post mentions numerous worthwhile topics, viewed especially thru the lens of the Ike era in the then still-postbellum US.
When elements in the GWBush-2 executive were penning demurrers to congressional committees, and refusing to provide documents or even to appear and testify, or even to meet with congressional representatives in an adversarial, sworn format interview which could be recorded, some of the claimed precedents for that standoffish approach had formed in memos and comments among Ike and his cabinet during the postwar early coldwar epoch, wherein basically Ike both claimed the right to refuse to let his folks testify, and his right to fire them if they did so speak. In other theaters, I believe Ike's Nato involvement formed part of the background for what both the UN resolution on Libya did, and the Nato followup action attempted with the US executive's robotic war elements deployment. The ennui with wartime as a protracted state, during Ike's tenure afforded him a shield of evasion with respect to the concepts which led to the 1973 War Powers Resolution in congress. There are several zones on the globe in which that applied on Ike's shift, as the post author alludes. The postbellum history of coldwar central and eastern Europe is one such record; also, the beginnings of the three successive leaderships in Egypt extend back to those times.
The only concern the GOP...blah...blah...
# posted by Bart DePalma : 5:18 PM The only concern, and I do mean ONLY, is how to get back control of the White House.
Andrew Bacevich had a stimulating review of this book in the London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 12, 16 June 2011.
It might be available to non-subscribers, and is at least available to subscribers, at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n12/andrew-bacevich/a-hell-of-a-spot. A sample: "In the midst of this commotion, Eisenhower angrily declared his intention to do the right thing, the implications for his re-election be damned – a claim Nichols takes at face value. In public, the president repeatedly asserted his commitment to equality before the law as the basis of peace. ‘We cannot,’ he insisted, ‘subscribe to one law for the weak, another law for the strong; one law for those opposing us, another for those allied with us’ – noble sentiments that had not stayed Eisenhower’s hand when dealing with matters in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam and elsewhere."
I've now read the Bacevich review (after subscibing to the London Review of Books in order to do so). It's a typically interesting view, which places great emphasis on the enunciation of the "Eisenhower Doctrine" after the Suez crisis was over that, in effect, put the US permanently into Middle Eastern politics in place of the now displaced British. I think that Bacevich is quite rigtht about the post-Suez events, not to mention Ike's willingness to trust the CIA with regard to the "necessity" of overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala (and signing on to the Bay of Pigs). All of that can be recognized, but I remain very glad that Ike, and not Stevenson, was Commander-in-Chief in 1956. Would that someone other than John Foster Dulles been Secretary of State, but as we saw with Dean Rusk, getting a Democratic President certainly didn't guarantee a more perspicacious SofS during the height of the Cold War.
I have not read Prof. Bacevich's review as yet, although I have read at least two of his books and many op-eds going back to 9/11. I had the good fortune to audit two of his courses on foreign policy/international affairs after 9/11. As I recall, before the "Eisenhower Doctrine" post-Suez Canal, there was the FDR middle east "protective" of energy sources in that area, particularly the understanding with respect to Saudi Arabia. By the time of FDR's "protective," there had been a recognition that American oil would no longer suffice for purposes of national security. Perhaps Truman had this in mind with the US recognition of the UN's establishment of the nation of Israel. From FDR on the Executive has expanded on his "protective" not only during the Cold War but beyond to the present. Doubting Thomases might check out National Security Strategies over the years.
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