Making excuses for Eisenhower

In Eisenhower, The White House Years, Jim Newton briefly narrates the America-engineered coup in Guatemala of 1954, to get rid of President Arbenz.

The story as he tells it, particularly the highlights concerning the interest in the matter of United Fruit and that company's influence in the US government, is a disgrace to America and especially to Eisenhower and the Cold Warriors he had surrounded himself with.

All the more reason to reject the Cold War, altogether.

All the same, Newton makes excuses for him.

Surprisingly.

In truth, the only two important decisions IKE made about the Cold War for which we ought to be relieved, if not grateful, that I know of, were the decisions not to rescue the French at Dien Bien Phu and not to commit the US to continental war with China in the event that the Chinese helped Ho Chi Minh and other Communists overrun Southeast Asia.

Update.

No, there were others every time he refused the repeated urgings of the Joint Chiefs to go to war, apparently often with China, just in his first term.

Another update.

So Eisenhower took out Arbenz and Mossadegh, neither of them a communist and neither aligned with the Russians but left unmolested Castro, both a communist and aligned with the Russians.

Sure signs of a great president and unsurpassed Cold War leader.

Eventually, other Cold War leaders would have us fighting a desperate 10 years war against communism half a world away in Southeast Asia - the very war Eisenhower had rejected - while refusing to do so 90 miles offshore.