Jean Edward Smith, the John Marshall professor of Political Science at Marshall University, wrote in today’s NY Times http://100days.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/how-to-end-a-war-eisenhowers-way/. Smith tells how Pres. Dwight Eisenhower was willing to go against his own Republican Party and negotiate a peace agreement with North Korea after Eisenhower visited Korea and reached the conclusion “we could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible result.â€
This is a valuable history lesson. According to Smith, Eisenhower, a five-star general, “rejected the concept of limited war, and believed that American troops should never be sent into battle unless national survival was at stake.”
