“THE TILLMAN STORY - Associated Content” plus 1 more |
| THE TILLMAN STORY - Associated Content Posted: 22 Aug 2010 11:51 AM PDT US Release date 20th August, 2010 International Release Dates TBA This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Eisenhower has much to teach Obama about the limits of presidential insight - Deseret News Posted: 20 Aug 2010 11:06 PM PDT Published: Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010 12:09 a.m. MDT Fifty years ago this summer, with Americans riveted by a presidential contest pitting John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower contemplated his departure from the White House. As he prepared to retire from public life, Ike sketched out the ideas that would inform his celebrated farewell address, presciently warning against the dangers of a military-industrial complex. Simultaneously, he was plotting ways to overthrow the Cuban government. Eisenhower did not remain in office long enough to implement the plan that his minions hatched. Instead, he bequeathed it to JFK, who promptly and naively allowed it to proceed. We remember the ensuing debacle by the place where it occurred: the Bay of Pigs. Although Kennedy took the fall for the bungled, CIA-engineered invasion by Cuban exiles, his predecessor deserves a share of the blame. Without Eisenhower, the Bay of Pigs would never have occurred. How could such a careful and seasoned statesman have concocted such a crackpot scheme? The apparent contradiction — wisdom and folly coexisting in a single figure — forms a recurring theme in presidential politics, one that persists today. Story continues below What was true then, when the ostensible threat posed by Fidel Castro loomed large, remains true now, when the issue has become Afghanistan: The formulation of American statecraft rests on three widely accepted fictions. Presidents, we are led to believe, know things the rest of us can't know, or at least can't be allowed to know. Armed with secret knowledge and abetted by sophisticated advisers, presidents are by extension uniquely positioned to discern the dangers facing the nation. The surest way to address those dangers, therefore, is for citizens to defer to the Oval Office. Call it the Trust Daddy principle. Yet there are at least two problems. First, presidential judgment has repeatedly proved to be fallible; Ike's reckless campaign to unseat Castro providing a case in point. Perhaps worse, presidential claims of being able to connect the dots, thereby revealing the big picture, have turned out to be bogus. Eisenhower (and Kennedy) viewed Castro's revolution as an intolerable affront — tiny Cuba placing the entire Western Hemisphere in jeopardy. The Cuban dictator had to go. Yet half a century later, Castro survives and his revolution wheezes along. Who cares? It's difficult to recall exactly what all the fuss was about. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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