Skip to main content

Ike's Bluff

By

Oliver Stone devoted a whole episode to Eisenhower, and it wasn't very complimentary.  He wanted to counter the recent spate of "I like Ike" books that have come out like this one.  Ike's "Hidden Hand' leadership has been both praised and derided by historians over the years.  Among many of Stone's and Kuznick's allegations is that the US essentially fought a proxy war in Vietnam under his watch, covering 80% of France's military expenses, and providing additional logistical support.  This was one of many proxy wars and other covert activities carried out during Eisenhower's administration.

Evan Thomas counters with the view that Eisenhower, being an excellent Bridge player, knew how to bluff at propitious moments in the Cold War, to avoid direct confrontation with the USSR, or full scale involvement in Vietnam, not wanting to repeat Korea.  His mission was to "avoid any war," says Thomas, at least directly.  This doesn't excuse him from the numerous covert activities that led to the deposing of leaders like Mossadeq in Iran, but it does put these events in the larger context of Ike's administration.  It reminds me of the foreign policy Obama has set in his administration.


Comments

  1. avrdsFebruary 1, 2013 at 5:36 AM

    The review you've been waiting for:

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/21/oliver-stone-cherry-picking-our-history/

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonFebruary 1, 2013 at 8:43 AM

    Thanks av. Will respond to it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more