Free Republic

ABOARD USS RONALD REAGAN AT SEA, July 6, 2009 – The Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group relieved the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group today in command of Task Force 50 and launched its first sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 22 launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, July 6, 2009. Ronald Reagan relieved USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Task Force 50 and launched its first sorties into Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Apprentice Oliver Cole  (Click...

It is in this arena that Eisenhower excelled and that, I believe, Obama will fail us. As Barack Obama spends his precious time talking about the challenges of the day by noting the shortcomings of the past administration, Eisenhower went to work. As Obama rubs shoulders with Hollywood elites and runs the late night talk show circuit, Eisenhower addressed the bottom line needs of the country. As Obama triples the country’s debt and nationalizes the free market system, Eisenhower gave us economic prosperity after the bloodiest of wars.

Historical comparisons have to be drawn with caution. No two events are identical. The pitfalls of historical analogy are as numerous as its benefits. However, comparing events in history can clarify and sharpen our understanding of the phenomenon under discussion. Obama delivers remarks at Cairo University on Thursday. Photo: AP In this spirit, it's possible to draw a comparison between President Barack Obama's new policy toward Israel and that pursued by president Dwight Eisenhower and his administration from 1953 until 1957, when it also changed the direction of US policy toward Israel. The similarities are quite striking. Eisenhower and his...

Sixty-five years ago, Gen. Eisenhower prepared himself for D-Day with hope and trepidation. Having made the decision to go earlier on the day of June 5, he spent time during the afternoon with the paratroopers who would be the first to leave for France. Although he said that he found it hard to look men in the eye on the eve of battle, knowing that many of them would soon be dead, he forced himself to the task - - it was his responsibility; ultimately, all of what would happen the next day, for better or for worse, was his...

US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday when he admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said during his keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. It is the first time a serving US president has publicly admitted American involvement in the coup. (snip) Obama also said: "For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to...

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

On the morning of April 12th, 1945 General Eisenhower met Generals Bradley and Patton at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp. Afterward Eisenhower also ordered every American soldier in the area who was not on the front lines to visit Ohrdruf and Buchenwald. He wanted them to see for themselves what they were fighting against. On this Yom HaShoah their words are much more moving then anything I could say : During the camp inspections with his top commanders Eisenhower said that the atrocities were “beyond the American mind to comprehend.” He ordered that every citizen of the town of Gotha personally tour...

Much has been written in recent weeks of the Obama administration's possible tilt toward a more evenhanded U.S. Middle East policy. Contrary to popular perception, however, if such a change were indeed implemented, it would constitute not so much a new and revolutionary approach as it would an old and reactionary one. It would, in fact, be several giant steps backward to the approach pursued by the U.S. for the first decade and a half of Israel's existence, never more faithfully than during the eight-year tenure of Dwight Eisenhower, who died 40 years ago on March 28 at the age...

On Saturday January 17, 2009, during the Fox 4 0′clock news hour, Shepard Smith recalled the anniversary of President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address to the nation, but he only mentioned one of Ike’s threat warnings, the one that reminded us to beware of the "Military Industrial Complex." This warning came from a military man, so it’s been a turn of phrase that slobbers off the lips of suspicious lefty infants shortly after they’re forced to abandon the nipple and accept Marx.

WHY WE DON'T CELEBRATE 'HISTORIANS DAY'February 18, 2009Being gracious winners, this week, liberals howled with delight at George Bush for coming in seventh-to-last in a historians' ranking of the presidents from best to worst. This was pretty shocking. Most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents. Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job. So congratulations, George Bush! Whenever history professors...

A friend asked me to consider Dwight Eisenhower as the last "fiscally responsible" President. Until the launch of Sputnik and the subsequent advent of the Space Race, he says that Eisenhower tried hard to blunt Soviet expansion and meet them head-on during his administration while also doing his utmost to keep the budget of the government balanced and its growth checked. Basically, once Sputnik was launched and the CIA caught flat-footed on estimates about the advanced level if the Soviet rocketry program and ICBM capabilities, subsequent administrations spared no expense in meeting any perceived threat. This sort of "spare no...

Here is video of President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivering his second inaugural address on Monday, January 21, 1957. You can see Eisenhower's first inaugural address here. January 20 occurred on a Sunday, so the President took the oath in the East Room at the White House that morning. The next day he repeated the oath of office on the East Portico of the Capitol. Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the oath of office on the President's personal Bible from West Point. Marian Anderson sang at the ceremony at the Capitol. A large parade and four inaugural balls followed the ceremony.That's...

AugustReview.com [Editor's note: members of the Trilateral Commission and companies with Commission representation appear in bold type.] Since 1973, this writer has made inquiry as to the location and ownership of the vast stores of monetary gold (400 oz., .999 pure bars) in the world. There has not been a formal audit on Fort Knox, for instance, since the Eisenhower administration. Official statistics on gold holdings are often contradictory. Getting plain answers from any Central Bank in the world, including the Fed, is virtually impossible. This paper points out a pattern of manipulation that has been clearly observed by many...

Did any one else see this elite? img http://washingtonindependent.mypublicsquare.com/files/washingtonindependent/sridhar/Susan-EisenhowerCrop.jpg">

Why we should still like Ike and back Mac From Chicago Magazine: "He was a Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, a celebrated orator and an intellectual running against a military hero at the time of an unpopular war. His political resumé was relatively short, and his appeal formed in part around his call for a change in the practice of politics in this country. Critics claimed he was an elitist, and Republicans accused him of being weak and naïve about America's enemies. He got crushed in the general election." Coincidence? I think not! Read the rest of the article here and...

John McCain harkens back to a different era in America. Cue "Mr. Sandman" and let's take a trip back to good ole 1955. A time when America was safe and sound because the White House was occupied by a humble, plain speaking citizen soldier from Kansas. That man was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike is back on the scene with a vengance and I'm not talking about the hurricane steaming across the Atlantic. Reform. Prosperity. Peace. Sound familiar? It's not a coincidence that the McCain campaign is playing straight from Ike's playbook... Click here to read the full article

It was July 15, 1958, and Second Lieutenant Simon L Leis Jr was nervous. As he waited for orders aboard the USS Taconic, he peered across the rough waters of the Mediterranean towards the yellow sands of Khalde beach, just five miles south of Beirut. Like the other members of the United States Marine Corps that day, Leis was preparing for battle. Briefed to expect the possibility of a hostile reception, the young leatherneck from Cincinnati, Ohio, knew little of the complexities surrounding Lebanon’s predicament. But when the call to arms finally came, he was ready. As whoops of anticipation...

Fifty years ago today, an American president successfully stood up against the Moslem tide in the Middle East and won a victory. But the anniversary may pass completely unnoticed by most of the media, and the lesson of that event remains unlearned by most Americans. On July 15, 1958, President Eisenhower began what was called "Operation Blue Bat." President Chamoun of Lebanon, a Maronite Christian, had refused to side with Arab Moslem nations against the West. The result was that within Lebanon, supported by Syria, Muslims pushed for the end of the Chamoun administration (and, tacitly, for an end to...

I am constantly amazed (and annoyed) when the Right claims that the US has been hijacked by the Left over the past few decades. This is utter nonsense - the actual evidence indicates that we've moved far, far to the Right. Consider the case of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961), Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, and a Republican. Funny thing is, by today's standards, Ike would be a flaming liberal, to the Left of all recent serious contenders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Ike on Taxes First, a quick...

Susan Eisenhower is more than just another disappointed Republican. She is also Ike's granddaughter and a dedicated member of the party who has urged her fellow Republicans in the past to stick with the GOP. But now Eisenhower, who runs an international consulting firm, is endorsing Barack Obama. She has no plans to officially leave the Republican Party. But in Eisenhower's view, Obama is the only candidate who can build a national consensus on the issues most important to her—energy, global warming, an aging population and America's standing in the world. "Barack Obama will really be in a singular position...

Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term "military-industrial complex," and he offered advice that is still relevant today. "As we peer into society's future," he said, we "must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to...

Fifty years ago this month, President Eisenhower and Sputnik were in the news -- and so were the marital travails of an Air Force pilot named David Steeves. The 23-year-old lieutenant -- once a national hero -- was now under a cloud of innuendo and suspicion stirred up by the nation's news media. Decades before media abuse became a hotly debated topic, Lt. Steeves was a victim of it, suffering a public humiliation he did not deserve. The Air Force, for its part, may have contributed to this guilt-by-innuendo. But ultimately it was the mainstream media that put the pilot's...

Thick black smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday in Vice President Dick Cheney's suite of offices in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. Cheney's office was damaged by smoke and water from fire hoses, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. The vice president was not in the building at the time; he was in the West Wing of the White House with President Bush. More than 1,000 people who work in the building were evacuated. The fire broke out on the second floor of the building around about 9:15 a.m. and was under control within...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2007 – For volunteers with South Riding, Va.-based Operation Pinecone, Halloween is over and the Christmas rush has begun. “We have 25 camps, four hospitals (and) two humanitarian aid contacts,” said Mary Hacker, who founded the group two years ago after deciding to super-size a care package originally planned for one family friend deployed to Iraq. “A neighbor came by, saw what I was doing, and said she had wanted to do something to help the troops but that she didn’t have a contact over there,” Hacker explained. Word spread through Hacker’s rural Virginia neighborhood and,...

After getting the Supreme Court of Earl Warren on its side, the NAACP legal team rolled from victory to victory including changing the bus seating rules in Montgomery, Alabama and integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Martin Luther King was embarking on an economic boycott and civil disobedience path while the NAACP would continue its efforts in the federal court system to integrate southern educational institutions including the Meredith vs. Fair case involving the University of Mississippi. President Eisenhower and the GOP hoped that their intervention in the Little Rock case would keep northern black votes in the...

Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered troops into Little Rock, Ark., to enforce a federal court order for school desegregation. It was an extraordinary action under any circumstances, more so in a former Confederate state. But Little Rock was just the tip of the civil rights iceberg for Eisenhower. He had also desegregated the District of Columbia, completed the integration of the armed forces, appointed progressive federal judges, and secured passage of the first civil rights legislation in over 80 years.

With Federal District Judge Ronald Davies moving for an injunction against Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus the burden of enforcing any injunction would fall on the Eisenhower Administration. President Eisenhower later spoke of his regret in making Earl Warren Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but for now it was his job and the job of his Attorney General Herbert Brownell to enforce desegregation of schools. There was political gain for the Republican Party with a majority of black votes going to Eisenhower in 1956. Democrat Congressman Brooks Hays of Arkansas was acting as an intermediary between the president and the...

President Sends Troops to Little Rock, Federalizes Arkansas National Guard; Tells Nation He Acted to Avoid An Anarchy Eisenhower on Air Says School Defiance Has Gravely Harmed Prestige of U.S. President Warns of Anarchy Peril Washington, Sept. 24--President Eisenhower sent Federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., today to open the way for the admission of nine Negro pupils to Central High School. Earlier, the President federalized the Arkansas National Guard and authorized calling the Guard and regular Federal forces to remove obstructions to justice in Little Rock school integration. His history-making action was based on a formal finding that his...

Special Message to the Congress on the Middle East Situation January 5, 1957 [Delivered in person before a joint Session] To the Congress of the United States: First may I express to you my deep appreciation of your courtesy in giving me, at some inconvenience to yourselves, this early opportunity of addressing you on a matter I deem to be of grave importance to our country. In my forthcoming State of the Union Message, I shall review the international situation generally. There are worldwide hopes which we can reasonably entertain, and there are worldwide responsibilities which we must carry to...

Something tells me that President Bush did not write the speech he delivered last week at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City. For one thing, it was relatively coherent. For another, it was steeped in historical references that, while run through the ideological wringer of the neoconservative spin machine, displayed a historical breadth not frequently associated with the most intellectually disengaged president since Andrew Johnson. But the one section of the speech that made me certain that Bush had nothing to do with its preparation was its attack on journalist I.F. Stone. Comparing the current quagmire in...

When Fred Thompson finally announces his candidacy next month, it will be the closest thing to a successful draft of a presidential candidate in more than a half-century. It isn’t that the actor-turned-U.S. senator-turned-actor had to have his arm twisted to run. But Thompson did need to be convinced it would be more than a fool’s errand, and he clearly was not planning on running for president until others sought him out. The rest of the current White House aspirants, all of whom have been planning to run since at least the end of 2004, have been thinking about becoming...

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border. Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond. President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation...

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border. Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond. President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation...

On the evening before D-Day, Eisenhower left SHAEF headquarters at 6 PM and traveled to Newbury where the 101st Airborne was boarding for the invasion. To the last moment Ike's air commander Leigh-Mallory saw only tragedy from the air assault, predicting hundreds of planes and gliders would be shot down by German artillery and aircraft. Ike remained just as committed to the idea that the risk needed to be taken. Ike arrived at 8 PM and did not leave until after 11 PM when the last C-47 was airborne. In My Three Years with Eisenhower Captain Harry C. Butcher says,...

Less than a year ago, Sen. John McCain of Arizona was the most visible Republican in the fight for immigration reform, having joined forces with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to clamp down on border security and create a guest-worker program for the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants. ....In his formal presidential announcement speech in New Hampshire last month, he (McCain) made no mention of the issue. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose record is filled with pro-immigrant speeches and actions, has been largely silent on the debate.

In 1952, General Dwight David Eisenhower led Republicans out of the political wilderness, returning a Republican to the White House for the first time in 20 years and a Republican majority to Congress for only the third time in 20 years. Today’s Republicans wander in another political wilderness, troubled by the incapacitated leadership of one of history’s most unpopular presidents and vexed by the loss of their congressional majority. Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani speaks during his campaign stop at Valley High School, Tuesday, April 3, 2007, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Nirmalendu Majumdar) In 2008, could Rudy Giuliani...

During February, Black History Month, and throughout every year, Republican candidates and office-holders would benefit tremendously from appreciating the GOP’s heritage of civil rights achievement. A forgotten hero of the modern-day civil rights movement, Herbert Brownell, was born on this day in 1904. Attorney General Brownell was instrumental in the appointment of his old friend, Republican Gov. Earl Warren, as Chief Justice in 1953. The next year, Brownell’s Justice Department submitted a brief to the Supreme Court arguing against racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. It was he who suggested to Eisenhower that he send U.S. troops to...

Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief for The Times, is responding to reader questions in the paper's editions this week. Among those he addressed this morning is the one below: Q. Please tell us your voting record for the past ten years. I want to confirm your liberal bias. --David Owens A. I'm always amazed at the certitude with which people make assumptions about journalists and their political views. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have voted for Republicans and Democrats over the years. And I published a book in 2003, Secret Empire: Eisenhower, The CIA, and The Hidden...

Several days after the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, David Welch, the head of the Middle East desk in the United States Department of State, argued before a selected audience that U.S. policy had been, and would continue to be, to isolate American enemies in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaida. The policy was to isolate each of them separately and all of them together. <--snip--> Looking back at history may be useful to learn some lessons. The basic doctrine of the Austro-Hungarian empire that broke apart at the end of World War I was...

For Egypt, the Suez War was a military disaster with thousands of dead, wounded or captured. The Israelis captured miltary equipment they would put to use in later wars. The Egyptian Air Force was driven from the skies with much of it destroyed on the ground. But Abdel Gamal Nasser and his Egyptian regieme won a great propaganda victory that was handed to him by the power of the United States in getting Britain, France and Israel out. The United States wanted to win favor with the "Third World." Nasser didn't run away from Soviet support after the war and...

By early morning on November 2, 1956, all the Egyptian troops that could get out were withdrawn across the Suez Canal from Sinai. Troops cut off in the Gaza Strip and at Sharm-el-Sheikh would end up surrendering to the Israelis. Anglo-French bombing put the Egyptian Air Force out of action and forced whatever planes were left to fly out of the country. The RAF bombed Radio Cairo and hit its main antenna mast, knocking out its signal. Meanwhile in New York the emergency session of the UN General Assembly broke off at 5 AM so delegates could eat something and...

As promised by President Eisenhower the United Nations Security Council went into emergency session on October 30, 1956. Both the United States and Soviet Union introduced resolutions calling on Israel to cease its attack and pull back to the 1949 armistice lines. The United States resolution called on other nations to not use force or threaten to use force in the situation (clearly aimed at France and Britain). It also called for sanctions against Israel until she complied with the resolution. Both resolutions were vetoed by France and Britain. Eventually the Yugoslav delegate asked the council to use a procudural...

It was 50 years ago today that Israel launched military operations in Sinai to coincide with the French and British moves to take control of the Suez Canal. By October 28th Israel publicly admitted the mobilization that began two days earlier. They continued to give the impression that attacks from the Jordanian side of the border (West Bank) were the reason for their mobilization. The then Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan, saw the two letters from President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion calling on Israel not to attack. Commenting on them, Dayan wrote in his diary: "The United States...

Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan arrived in Paris on September 29th, 1956. Four staff officers joined him and would remain in France to plan the pre-emptive attack on Egypt. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden wanted the French to get assurances from Israel that they would not attack Jordan. He was worried that a Nasser-like coup might occur and about pro-Nasser forces winning an upcoming election. Another member of the Israeli delegation, defense official Shimon Peres told the French there would be no attack but strong reprisal raids for the terror attacks coming across the Israeli border from Jordan. A...

Anthony Eden held an emergency cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street into the early morning hours of July 27th, 1956. Eden told the American diplomatic representative at the meeting that "The Egyptian has his thumb on my windpipe. Tell Mr. Dulles I cannot allow that." Eden had promised that his deals with Nasser would make the Egyptian ruler more friendly. Seizure of the Anglo-French owned canal proved that promise wrong. He spoke that night by phone with the French Foreign Minister Pineau. The French were eager to work with their newfound friends in Israel to launch military action against Nasser...

A Man, A Plan, A Canal What Nasser wrought when he seized Suez a half century ago. By Arthur Herman ON JULY 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, at that time the most vital international waterway in the world. The Middle East, and all of us, still live under the shadow of the fateful events his decision triggered 50 years ago. Even more than the Cold War, the Suez crisis has shaped the world we live in. And at its heart was the biggest American foreign policy blunder since the War of 1812....

In addition to coming under vituperation and threats against his life from the left for waging pre-emptive war in Iraq in order to save our children from death and destruction from Islamic terrorists, President Bush is also being criticized for relative inaction with regard to the threats from North Korea and Iran. These critics have the advantage of not knowing anything. It is always easy to criticize and offer simplistic solutions when one is essentially ignorant of the facts, some of which I have set out below:

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border. Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond. President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents – less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation...