TRUMAN OR MACARTHUR?
Truman or MacArthur? PRESIDENT TRUMAN was right in firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur for precisely the reason he gave—that the general "is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the...
...Is Europe more important, militarily and politically, than Asia...
...or that he knows Asia better than does the President...
...Actually, its own coolness toward a negotiated give-and-take settlement has put the Administration in the position of waiting Micawber-like for something to turn up while boys continue to die on the battlefields of Korea...
...While only 29% approved the President's firing of the general, 40% thought the MacArthur proposal to bomb Manchuria would not bring the war to an end...
...But no one can seriously deny that under our democratic system Mr...
...only with better ideas.—M.H.R...
...Both Truman and MacArthur have used the word "appeasement" in its sneer and smear sense, and yet a majority of Americans, in wnos| name our leaders reject negotiation are convinced that we "haven...
...Nor do I think President Truman, however much I agreed with him on his basic split with MacArthur, is being any more candid or realistic in continuing to proclaim his intention to limit the war in Korea without making it clear that only limited results are possible in limited warfare...
...Certainly no one, least of all so great a soldier as Douglas MacArthur, can quarrel with the decision to dismiss a subordinate whose views are in direct collision with those of his superiors...
...gone far enough" in conciliation and mediation...
...All the heat and hate and hysteria generated by the President's historic action cannot impugn the perfect correctness of his decision to fire a subordinate who was publicly attempting to sabotage his policy...
...At just about the time the Truman-MacArthur dispute was nearing the explosion point, a tremendously significant event took place in India...
...The immediate issue, and the long-run constitutional issue, were as clear-cut as that...
...Its strength was reduced from 30 to 14 members, with 15 of the seats it lost going to a coalition of Communists and fellow-travelers...
...This clash of views reached the boiling point in late March when UN forces were again nearing the 38th Parallel...
...Every meeting seemed to end in harmony, but after each, the general kicked over the traces by issuing pronouncements in which he made it as clear as his great grasp of the English language permitted that he rejected the policy of the civilian authority...
...There are any number of important military issues within the context of the Truman-MacArthur debate...
...All the pent-up frustration of months of foreign policy failures, military stalemates, mounting casualties, and home-front scandals swept away the sober common sense of the man in the street as he hitched his agin'-the-government emotions to MacAr-thur's five stars...
...The anti-Communist Congress Party, which had held all 30 seats in the governing body of Calcutta, lost a major election...
...Here, we're convinced, the basic soundness of the people penetrates the fog of oratory and editorializing which has enveloped the country for weeks...
...you can beat ideas...
...This shows up spectacularly in the same Gallup Poll which revealed that 60% of the people felt that "Washington should try harder to find peace terms acceptable to both China and ourselves," and that "Washington has not gone far enough in that direction...
...Instead, on March 24 he infuriated our allies in the UN, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Administration by proclaiming his own cease-fire proposal...
...A Gallup Poll, taken one week after the dismissal of MacArthur and announced the day the general made his triumphal entry into Washington, showed that while 62% of the people opposed the President's removal of MacArthur, only 46% thought that bombing of Manchuria would speed the end of the war...
...The political and psychological impact of such a demonstration of democracy in action would be tremendous, but nobody in Washington seems to care deeply enough about this fundamental aspect of the world conflict to do something about it...
...II One may argue, persuasively, that Douglas MacArthur is an abler and more gifted man than Harry Truman...
...Douglas MacArthur understandably found it intensely galling to fight a limited war in Korea...
...Three times the President sent topflight officials to talk things over with MacArthur, and the President himself flew out to confer with his commander...
...This development, reflecting Indian disgust with the way we have played power politics with their desperate plea for grain, rated three paragraphs in a few American dailies, none in the others, although its significance as a forerunner of things to come in India may rate more attention in the history of our time than the present haggling over military strategy in Korea...
...Can we bomb Manchuria, blockade China, and transport and protect Chiang Kai-shek's Formosa forces to the mainland of China without provoking all-out war with Red China...
...only guesses, for so much depends on the secret thinking of a handful of men in Moscow and Peiping who aren't talking, only listening...
...In vast areas of the world conditions prevail which are precisely like those which characterized China before she went Communist...
...Why don't we try harder to do something neither of you gentlemen talks much about—reach a settlement with the Chinese...
...Actually, while the great majority backed MacArthur and opposed Truman, there was no such majority for MacArthur's policies...
...Why don't we now, even as we wrangle over the military strategy, put on dramatic demonstration for Korea and for all Asia, of American build ing genius in action...
...a large minority may feel that bombing Manchuria would end the war, but a substantial majority feels that we haven't tried hard enough to negotiate a settlement with the Chinese...
...In India, too, we are losing ground steadily...
...The logical conclusion of the MacArthur strategy is war with China for the rest of our lifetime...
...As for Korea itself, this nation has a great opportunity to demonstrate—with deeds—the hopeful, affirmative side of ourselves and our way of life...
...Washington asked MacArthur to send any comment he cared to make on the proposals...
...In Iran, rich in oil, strategic in geography, and significant as a pacemaker in the Middle East, the forces of Communism are gaining all the time because we of the free West offer no hopeful, democratic alternative to the desperate poverty of their lives, while Communism successfully preaches its gospel of change to people for whom any change must be a change for the better...
...Truman, for all his itch to shoot from the hip, showed extraordinary patience—doubtless because he knew he was up against a brilliant and popular adversary...
...It seems clear enough that MacArthur begged for the showdown—and got it...
...There are no answers to these questions...
...We have cleared South Korea of the Communist invaders...
...Where the rub came, for Mr...
...Both Truman and MacArthur have shown a keen grasp of the meaning of the revolutionary stirrings in Asia—the latter extraordinarily so in his great address to Congress —but neither has displayed a genuine willingness to face up to the tremendous challenge and breathless possibilities of providing democratic leadership to the popular struggle for a better and freer life...
...Truman, was the emotional incapacity of the people to accept Mac-Arthur as a subordinate...
...Certainly one dominant factor was the deepening concern of a great many Americans over what they came to feel was aimless vacillation on the part of the Truman Administration, not only in the conduct of the war, but in seeking an honorable compromise with Red China...
...The majority may lean toward MacArthur...
...If a limited war in Korea produces only heartbreaking stalemate, what evidence is there that a limited war against China, as advocated by MacArthur, won't produce the same kind of stalemate, on a larger and more heartbreaking scale...
...Although he occupied four major positions in the Pacific—and filled them with extraordinary distinction—he found time to bombard friendly publishers and politicians with statements in which he demanded, over the head of the constitutional authority, a more "aggressive" American policy, insisted that the whole Pacific be an American "moat," threatened the Chinese with attack on their mainland, and attacked those who disagreed with him as "confused and deluded" in presenting "fallacious and threadbare" arguments marked by "hypocrisy and sophistry...
...Clearly there were factors other than the clashing military views of the two men which led people to respond as they did...
...On March 20 the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent MacArthur a message saying that the United States, in cooperation with other UN nations represented on the battlefield, was preparing cease-fire terms to the Chinese Communists...
...Truman had the constitutional right—and duty— to fire a military commander who was not only publicly rejecting the policy of his superior civilian authority, but was doing everything in his power to discredit the policies he was sworn to administer...
...Douglas MacArthur for precisely the reason he gave—that the general "is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties...
...Military strategy seems much more exciting, and so we go about preparing to beat Communism by old-fashioned military means,: forgetting all the while that you can't shoot ideas...
...but we fail to see how fighting a limited war in China will be any less annoying or more decisive for his successor...
...III For my part this instinctive suspicion of both camps, on these issues, makes abundant sense...
...We have the men, the materials, and the money to make homes and hospitals and schools rise on the ravaged soil ol South Korea, and thus provide some measure of hope, some faith in freedom, some chance for reconstruction to a people who know us up to now only as a military machine on the march...
...Mr...
...That's why I think there's an enormous amount of sense in the attitude of ordinary Americans who, however much they may be emotionally stirred in the clash of personalities, say, in effect, of the strife over military strategy: A plague on both your policies...
...or that he has an infinitely greater grasp of the military requirements of the Korean war...
...And certainly no one can have the slightest doubt, now that the general has had his say, that his views were and are irrevocably in conflict with those of his commander-in-chief and the civilian authority of our country...
...The general did not reply...
...Even as the Western democracies are fighting against one tiny segment of Communism in North Korea, Soviet Russia continues to make sweeping gains in the areas of the world riddled by hunger and desperation, just as she has in the six years since the end of World War II—years during which a dozen nations inhabitated by 700,000,000 human beings have fallen under the Red orbit—without the firing of a single Soviet shot...
...Will direct attack on the mainland of China bring Russia into the conflict and launch us on the atomic world war that both Truman and MacArthur say they are dedicated to preventing...
...In it he threatened that the UN might attack the Chinese mainland if Peiping did not stop fighting in Korea...
...A helping hand and democratic guidance today could swing the people's revolution along democratic lines, but we're too busy trying to shoot and bomb away the mistakes of the past to see that we're letting the same mistakes occur over an ever wider segment of the earth...
Vol. 15 • May 1951 • No. 5
