Late in the 1952 election campaign,...

Late in the 1952 election campaign, he promised that he would "go to Korea." in the way that in late November, Dwight Eisenhower and aides "used light planes to float along the front":

"Except for sporadic artillery fire and sniping there was little action at the second but in view of the potency of the positions the enemy had bring outed it was obvious that any frontal attack would instant great difficulties."

With that assessment, laconically recalled in his 1963 memoirs, the experienced soldier decided to liquidate the war. He had seen at a glance that continuing it was not worth the take away froms

George W Bush might over and above face an "Eisenhower moment" regarding Iraq. further not yet, in the opinion of Sen John Warner, the five- boundary Virginia Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee.

Warner joined the Navy in 1944 at 17 serv until 1946 then was called up to the Marine Corps during Korea. Because he is a military man who broadly interprets the president's inherent powers as commander in chief, it was startling when he freshly said that the Oct. 11 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq did in this way for purposes that were largely achieved according to the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. Last month Warner asked:

"What is the mission of the United States today in a less degree than this resolution if [Iraq] burst forths into a civil war? . . I think we have to examine remarkably carefully what Congress authorized the president to do in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of a situation if we're faced with all-out civil war and whether we have to take rise back to the Congress to acquire further indication of support."

still Warner knows that no Senate suffrage is apt to determine war policy. upon July 25, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson meeting with Democratic committee chairmen, was angered when they questioned his Vietnam policy. Johnson told them: "If you want me to learn out of Vietnam, then you have the prerogative of taking gone out the resolution" -- the Tonkin chasm resolution -- "under which we are revealed there now. You can repeal it tomorrow." each war ends, but none cessations that way.

Speaking in his Senate office, Warner says he is convinced that the essential characteristics of civil war are not however present in Iraq. Iraq's guidance he says, is "functioning," the security forces are improving, and senior military officials are not plotting against the restraint

still Warner also knows that the Iraqi government's writ barely streams beyond Baghdad's Green Zone. The security forces are not in addition competent to hold areas that U forces clear of insurgents. Holding as it is areas might require sending more U forces to Iraq, which would further alienate Iraqis.

For three reasons, Eisenhower's challenge in ending the Korean War was simpler than Bush's question would be in extracting U forces from Iraq: Eisenhower had a static military effrontery The U.S. objective of pushing the invaders from southerly Korea had been accomplished. And Eisenhower had a coercive threat.

In The frigid War: A New History, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale, who calls Eisenhower "at one time the most subtle and brutal strategist of the nuclear age," says that Eisenhower early in his presidency believed -- he later changed his mind -- that when nuclear weapons "can be used forward strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes" they should be used "exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else" And Eisenhower allowed America's adversaries to know that his military advisers were seeking ways to use like weapons to end the Korean fighting.

Warner thinks greatest in number congressional Democrats understand that there is an unpopular way to withstand an unpopular war -- according to voting for abandonment of all the objectives for which offspring has been shed. Warner defines the U objective in Iraq not in times of a glittering achievement, democracy, if it be not that as avoiding something appalling -- the Iraqi oil fields in jihadists' hands. Regarding Iraq, there will not in a short time be an Eisenhower moment.

e-mail: georgewill@washpost.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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