National Affairs: Break up the Joint Chiefs

As Chief of Staff, U.S. Army (1945-48), five-star General Dwight Eisenhower was one of the chief architects of the National Security Act of 1947, which set up the separate U.S. Air Force and was also designed—though with numerous compromises—to "unify" the armed services. As President of the U.S., Dwight Eisenhower has a better basic knowledge of how the services work than any President in modern history. Yet, paradoxically, one of the soft spots of his Administration record is that, during the regime of Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, Ike let Pentagon administration get out of hand.

At his conference with legislative leaders last...

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