CUT AND RUN HALL OF FAME: EISENHOWER, REAGAN, BUSH I

THOMAS MICHAEL HOLMES, HISTORY NEWS NETWORK - Did Dwight D. Eisenhower
"cut and run" in Korea in 1953? It was Ike who told the nation that if
he were elected he would go to Korea and, by implication, end the war.
It is generally conceded that Eisenhower did the responsible thing when
he quickly completed the truce negotiations that ended the fighting.

Would Harry Truman have been accused of "cut and run" in September 1950,
three months after the initial invasion of South Korea, had he accepted
the status quo ante bellum following the rout of the overextended North
Korean forces at the 38th parallel? Instead, Truman followed the advice
of General Douglas MacArthur and elected to "liberate" North Korea. As
the United Nations forces approached the border of the People's Republic
of China at the Yalu River, communist China entered the war and almost
drove the UN forces off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula.

Had Truman been willing to "cut and run," tens of thousands of American
lives might have been saved and North Korea might not have been
condemned to the isolation it has experienced ever since. In the end,
the war lasted for another three years. America sent 1.8 million of our
own into the fray: 54,200 were killed, 103,300 were wounded and 8,200
were listed as missing in action. We ended up at the 38th parallel,
right where we were in September 1950 -- and where we remain today.

Did Richard Nixon "cut and run" in Vietnam? Who can forget the pictures
showing Americans being evacuated by helicopter in 1975 as we left those
Vietnamese who had depended upon us to the tender mercies of the North
Vietnamese communists? They might feel, with some justification, that
America had "cut and run."

Yet in retrospect, it appears that the responsible thing for Nixon to
have done in 1969, when he first entered the White House, would have
been to follow the example of President Eisenhower and pull the plug on
the Vietnam War. It is worth remembering that almost half the 58,000
Americans killed in Vietnam died during Nixon's presidency.

The real mistake during what we call the Vietnam War was Lyndon
Johnson's, when he escalated the war after the bogus Tonkin Gulf
Resolution. . .

Did Ronald Reagan "cut and run" in 1983 after 241 American servicemen
died in Beirut in the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks? Some would
say that it wasn't the fact that Reagan pulled the American troops out
of Lebanon that was the mistake; the real mistake was the fact that
those Americans were put into an untenable position in the first place.

Did President George Herbert Walker Bush "cut and run" after the
coalition's qualified victory in the First Gulf War in 1991? The Shiites
of southern Iraq might say so. The elder Bush not only pulled out of
Iraq, but on the way out he invited the Shiites to overthrow their
repressive dictator, Saddam Hussein. Then, when they attempted to do so,
American forces stood by and watched while Saddam's army ripped the
Shiites to shreds.

It's ironic that the elder Bush, the current president's father, would
later explain that he didn't intervene because he didn't want the U.S.
to become bogged down in an Iraqi civil war. . .

Charges of "cut and run" have been leveled over the years by politicians
on both sides of the aisle. Upon closer examination, it turns out to be
a blunt rhetorical instrument that tends to obscure, rather than
illuminate, difficult decisions in complex situations.

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