When Defense Secretary Neil McElroy warned him in 1959 that further budget cuts would harm national security, Eisenhower replied, “If you go to any military installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell the commander that Ike says he’ll give him a gold star for his shoulder of he cuts the budget, there’ll be such a rush to cut costs that you’ll have to get out of the way.”
Eisenhower would periodically sigh to his staff secretary, General Andrew Goodpaster, “God help the nation when it has a president who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.”
The warning was not idle. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were politicians who believed in compromise and half-way measures, which they translated into warfare with words like “flexible response,” “surgical strikes,” and “gradual escalation.” The result was America’s descent into the Vietnam War.
Eisenhower, who had run a total war in Europe, was an all-or-nothing man. He warned JFK and LBJ to go all-in or get out of Vietnam. They did not listen.