I generally don't have much use for The Atlantic...

And this article is no exception. A possible reasonable look at the post presidential time of Eisenhower, I had hope for this article after reading the first paragraph. I was wrong.

Ike the Winter Soldier

Today, everybody likes Ike. Liberals see Dwight Eisenhower’s foreign policy as a model of strategic restraint. Conservatives view him as a tough but shrewd warrior president. But there’s another side to Ike, one that’s often ignored: The story of his political life after leaving the White House. Ike in winter became a ferocious hawk on Vietnam who helped propel America deeper into the quagmire.

Eisenhower was the son of pacifist Mennonites who fretted about his love of military history. He became a hero of World War II and the architect of D-Day. And Ike also understood the price of war. After becoming president in 1953, he hammered out a truce in the Korean War. In 1954, Eisenhower resisted entreaties to intervene in Vietnam following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Indeed, during the last seven-and-a-half years of Eisenhower’s presidency, only a single American service member was killed by hostile fire (in Lebanon in 1958). Eisenhower famously left the White House in 1961 warning about “the military-industrial complex.”

The author's ignorance is showing. Ike didn't hammer out a truce in Korea. After going to Korea after his inauguration, Ike made it clear to the Chinese and Soviets, through the Swiss, he would use nukes to end the war. He told them he was not going to let this go on forever. And within six months of him becoming president, the war ended. Gee, peace through strength. Who would have thunk it?

Some commentators have seen Obama as a successor. Both presidents entered office in the shadow of a stalemated war; both favored foreign-policy restraint and cool-headed realism. Fareed Zakaria wrote on “Why Barack is Like Ike.” “Eisenhower understood, as Obama surely does,” Jeffrey Frank wrote, “how America’s role can change indelibly in a moment: that sending a single air strike, or soldier or, as happened with later Administrations, thousands of soldiers, binds us to the outcome.”

A straw man is evidence of a weak argument and this is no exception. Mr. Tierney, name one person who compares Ike to B Hussein Obama. Eisenhower was a distinguished man of enormous accomplishments prior to his coming to the presidency in 1953. He was despised by the Republican Establishment who wanted their chosen candidate, Thomas Dewey as the nominee. Back to the threat to use nukes in Korea, no one questioned he would do it. His word was gold. Show me how B Hussein Obama compares in any way to Ike?

These odes to Eisenhower’s foreign-policy judgment always end with his retirement in 1961 to a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But Eisenhower lived for another eight years. He didn’t retreat from public life and paint pictures of world leaders like George W. Bush, but remained a major figure on the national stage. He enjoyed enormous respect and credibility as a war hero, the Republican Party’s elder statesman, and after 1964, one of only two ex-presidents still alive (the other being Harry Truman). Lyndon Johnson relied heavily on the counsel of a man who knew the burdens of office....

Ike was a accomplished leader, diplomat and president who's term was eight years of peace and prosperity. He was a leader in the end of "separate by equal" with the 1956 Civil Rights Act and the forced integration of Little Rock school. B Hussein years have been an economic disaster with multi-trillion dollar deficits, deliberate exploitation of racial tensions, the destruction of American influence and power around the world. Oh, Ike carried 39 states and 55 percent of the vote in 1952, 41 states and 57 percent in 1956. Sorry, we like Ike.

Oh, B Hussein Obama has no plans on leaving D.C. Will you have issues with that sir?