Old MacArthur had a war...

Another dissenting general

I've been reading Walter LaFeber's The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (1989) and I've been pleasantly surprised at how good it is. He keeps both his factual narrative and his analysis mostly on solid ground, it seems to me.

His account of President Harry Truman's firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War is a reminder of why we need to look closely at what "dissenting" generals are really saying:

In March 1951, Truman took steps to open truce talks with North Korea, but MacArthur undercut the president by declaring that North Korean and Chinese armies should surrender before they collapsed. Truman was furious but did little. During early April, Republican leader Joseph W. Martin, congressman from Massachusetts, released a letter from MacArthur. It declared that "we must win. There is no substitute for victory." Truman now had enough. He carefully consulted with his top military officers (the Joint Chiefs), who agreed that MacArthur should be recalled. They concluded he had undercut his civilian commander in chief and, of special importance, was losing the confidence of his own troops in Korea. As MacArthur's replacement, Truman named General Matthew Ridgway, a hero of World War II, the top field commander in Korea, a soldier who was totally loyal to his civilian superiors. As Truman nicely explained privately, "I was sorry to have to reach a parting of the way with the big man in Asia but he asked for it and I had to give it to him." (my emphasis)

Rightwing Republicans were delighted with MacArthur at the time. Even then, many of them were were happy to bash the (Democratic) President - yes, even At A Time Of War!!


For a while, it looked like MacArthur was on his way to coming out of the deal looking much better to most people than Truman. As LaFeber explains:

The American people also "gave it to him" on his return—huge ticker-tape parades, rallies, pro-MacArthur hysteria in cities from San Francisco to Boston. But as is often the case when Americans respond wildly to a supposed hero, they cooled off after listening closely to what he said. In the public "MacArthur hearings" of spring 1951, Americans could listen to a congressional investigation of the war. The general eloquently described the terrible bloodshed that, in his view, demanded total victory. But tough questioning revealed that such a victory was impossible without all-out war with China. Moreover, he wanted power placed in military hands and taken from civilians. MacArthur dismissed any possibility of Soviet intervention despite the Sino-Russian alliance. He had not been in the United States for more than thirteen years, and his answers indicated that he was out of touch with American feelings. (my emphasis)

Part of the enthusiasm of MacArthur's reception is usually credited to the fact that he was considered a hero of the Second World War and that he had not returned to be part of the postwar victory festivities. His enthusiastic reception probably surely reflected more nostalgia for the memory of the Second World War, already taking on a mythic status, than it represented support for jumping into a new world war six years after the previous one.

MacArthur gave a speech to a joint session of Congress, whose most famous line turned out to be his quoting a West Point song, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." LaFeber observes, "Much to Truman's relief - and MacArthur's surprise - the general did exactly that."

Tags: douglas macarthur, harry truman, korean war

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