"The Redacted Testimony That Fully Explains Why General ..." Topic

The Redacted Testimony That Fully Explains Why General MacArthur Was Fired

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Quite interesting, thanks for posting the link.

Chick

Definitely eye-opening.

I've long been of the opinion that if something less than a Military Messiah, Mac has been target of a lot of ideological sniping and mistruths. This quote from the book adds important nuance to the matter of his removal.

And, as any good argument should, it actually posed some questions, such as 1) WHY were the US Armed Forces--particularly the Air Force--so understrength and hard-pressed to operate in Korea? Why had the whole defense posture been allowed to drop to such an inadequate level? 2) What "Chinese Air Force" would have been unleashed if we escalated the war to Manchuria? There really wasn't any. Of course the Russians might have contributed far more air support than they already had, and if they had committed their submarines to the war, it definitely would have been a serious escalation.

But, if Russia provided an Air Force and Navy, why wouldn't that have essentially meant WW III was underway? If that was the case, concerns about the "dis-advantages" the US would incur in the Korean War would pale to insignificance with the worldwide crisis resulting.

Stalin was planning WW III when he died, according to recent Russian historians, and didn't donate a rodent's sphincter that it would be nuclear. As Egon the Ghostbuster said, "It would be bad."

Anyway, remarkable article, and thanks for posting the link.

TVAG

Very interesting. I often wonder what we don't know when current events are discussed in the media. Many times things sound so simple, based on what we see and hear in even the best news. Then much, much later we hear what we did not know at the time. As students of history, we should always be very aware of how little we know.

"The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War" as a whole by H.L. Brands (from which the article is essentially extracted) is quite worth reading. IT covers the Korean war from the start with lots of background that makes the situation with MacArthur even clearer.

Chris

As I have posted before, the defense budgets in the
late 1940's and early 1950's were severely butchered
by politicians who were very sensitive to the public's
tax-weariness which resulted from the war years.

Don't believe it? Go do the research.

MacA had a lot of faults and should have resigned and
then blasted the administration (Truman's, and I'm a
Truman fan) for the severe cuts.

That was interesting. Thanks.

Guzman – the Inchon landing and the Pusan Perimeter
breakout were orchestrated by MacA's staff.

You don't launch an amphibious operation, especially
along the Flying Fish waterway, on the spur of the
moment.