During the recent election campaign, Republican politicians (led by Vice President Richard Nixon) repeatedly argued that President Eisenhower "got us out of war and kept us out of war." Few U.S. voters got the full impact of the words. Twice this year the general in the White House, in agonizingly difficult personal decisions, quite literally kept the U.S. out of a shooting war. In the final weeks before the fall of Dienbienphu and, again, when an invasion of Quemoy Island seemed imminent, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that the U.S. roll back...
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