The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

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  REPUBLICAN ALEXANDER WILEY opened a new front against the administration. “You mentioned in your testimony that the inhibitions that were given you were without precedent. Do you want to amplify that?”

  “I think, Senator, they are so well known that unless somebody wishes me to, I have no desire to amplify them.”

  Wiley pitched MacArthur a softball. “Have you ever advocated the invasion of the Chinese mainland by U.S. ground forces?”

  “Senator, you know that is ridiculous. No man in his proper senses would advocate throwing our troops in on the Chinese mainland. I have never heard that advocated by anybody at any time. That is, any military man.”

  So what would the general have done?

  “As soon as it became apparent that Red China was throwing the full might of its military force against our troops in Korea, I would have served warning on her that if she did not within a reasonable time discuss a cease-fire order, that the entire force of the United Nations would be utilized to bring to an end the predatory attack of her forces on ours. In other words, I would have supplied her with an ultimatum that she would either come and talk terms of a cease-fire within a reasonable period of time or her actions in Korea would be regarded as a declaration of war against the nations engaged there, and that those nations would take such steps as they felt necessary to bring the thing to a conclusion. That is what I would have done, and I would still do it, Senator.”

  Wayne Morse of Oregon, who was rethinking his Republicanism en route to converting to Democracy, noted that some in the administration had said that the war in Korea was a holding action: that by fighting in Korea the United States bought time to rearm in preparation for a showdown with the Russians. Morse asked what MacArthur made of this argument.

  “The great trouble, Senator, is when you try to buy time in Korea, you are doing it at the tremendous expense of American blood,” MacArthur replied. “That does not seem to be buying time. It seems to me to be sacrificing our youth.”

  But was it not possible, as the administration suggested, that more lives would be lost in a premature war against Russia?

  “I have never accepted the theory that underlies your question, that the bringing of the Korean problem to a close would necessitate bringing the Soviet into war against us,” MacArthur said. “I believe that there is an excellent chance that if you apply the power against the Chinese, that that would not necessarily involve the Soviet into taking action against us.”

  Morse sought a stronger statement. “I am to understand, from your testimony, that you discount the danger of Russia coming into the war, either with a bombing operation or on a full-scale basis, including manpower, if we should bomb bases in Manchuria?”

  MacArthur took a step backward. “That is stating it a little different way than I stated it, Senator. I stated that under the present conditions, the losses we are sustaining, of Americans in Korea, cannot go on indefinitely, without bleeding this country white. I say that if you are trying to buy time, you are doing it the worst way you can. You are buying time at the expense of American blood. I think that is too expensive. There is no certainty that Russia will come in. There is no certainty that she will not come in. There is no certainty that anything that happens in Korea will influence her. That is speculative. You have to take a certain risk on these things, one way or another. All I know is that our men are going by the thousands over there, every month, and if you keep this thing on indefinitely, nothing could happen that would be worse than that. Therefore, I suggest that some plan be carried out that will bring this dreadful slaughter to a definite end.”

  MacArthur’s words became more impassioned. “War, never before in the history of the world, has been applied in a piece-meal way, that you make half-war, and not whole war. Now, that China is using the maximum of her force against us is quite evident. And we are not using the maximum of ours against her, in reply. We do not even use, to the maximum, the forces at our disposal, the scientific methods. And the result is that for every percentage you take away in the use of the Air and the Navy, you add a percentage to the dead American infantrymen. It may seem emotional for me to say that, but I happen to be the man that had to send them into it. The blood, to some extent, would rest on me.”

  MacArthur grew warmer still. “The inertia that exists! There is no policy—there is nothing, I tell you, no plan or anything.” The enemy knew what he was doing, but America did not. “He attacks today. We resist it. We fall back. We form a new line, and we surge back. Then he is right back, within a week maybe, up to the battlefront with his inexhaustible supply of manpower. He brings in another hundred thousand, or another half-million men, and tosses them at these troops constantly.” MacArthur shook his head darkly. “That is not war. That is appeasement.”

  58

  IT WAS A good day for MacArthur, and it should have been an exhausting one, for his testimony filled the entire session. But his stamina belied his years, and he bounced out of the room convinced he had done well. He was not used to such questioning; his subordinates were notorious for not questioning him, and he rarely held press conferences. But his natural eloquence and his moral self-confidence carried him over the few rough spots, and his stirring peroration moved even the skeptics on the committee.

  Yet he wasn’t finished, or, rather, the committee wasn’t finished with him. He was invited back for the following day. Overnight the position of the parties firmed. The Republicans grew more determined to make the hearings an indictment of Truman and the administration’s policies; the Democrats sought to parry the Republicans’ thrust by tangling MacArthur in contradictions.

  Brien McMahon, Democrat of Connecticut, asked about MacArthur’s characterization the previous day of the November advance as a reconnaissance in force. “As I recollect it, General, last November you issued a communiqué in which you said that this was the end-of-the-war offensive which would bring the boys home by Christmas.”

  “That was my hope,” MacArthur said.

  “Did you anticipate that you could get them home by Christmas with a reconnaissance in force?” McMahon asked.

  “The reconnaissance would have developed the strength of the enemy. If it was not sufficient to resist us, it would have been an all-out assault and, as I explained in my communiqué, it would have undoubtedly destroyed the last remnants of the North Korean force.”

  MacArthur considered his response a moment and decided he needed to do better. “Where a reconnaissance in force—the line between a reconnaissance in force and an assault attack is a rather nebulous one and depends upon circumstances. What starts out as a reconnaissance in force might well result in a full-scale assault so far as your forces are concerned.”

  “Was there any difference in opinion between you and the joint chiefs relative to how far you would go toward the Yalu in that advance?” McMahon asked.

  “The Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that it would be probably advisable, based upon the considerations at that time, to occupy the north of Korea with South Korean forces. They were adverse to having other nationals there. But the tactical conditions were such that South Koreans were not able to do so.”

  McMahon shifted his line of questioning. He quoted from MacArthur’s speech to Congress, where the general said of the questions facing American foreign policy planners, “The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector oblivious to those of another is to court disaster for the whole.” McMahon continued, “Now, General, you are aware, I am sure, of the mechanics that this government has set up for carrying out this business of weighing these interlocking factors—in other words, our global defense as a whole.” The senator cited the National Security Act of 1947, which established the National Security Council. “That is the body that has been set up by this Congress to coordinate our total global strategy.” McMahon noted that the membership included the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Now, General, assuming fo
r the sake of discussion that subsequent testimony brings real differences between you and the joint chiefs on how far our Eastern strategy can best promote our global security, and assuming this difference of viewpoint, would you then be prepared to admit that the joint chiefs’ judgment is better than yours and that the American people would be well advised to follow the judgment of the joint chiefs?”

  MacArthur dodged the question. “The authorities and responsibilities of the joint chiefs are laid down and prescribed by law,” he said. “Their position in the niche of American governmental procedure is entirely in accordance with the statutes. Whether I should agree with it or should not agree with it is not pertinent to the actions of the government of the United States.” As a theater commander he would not pass judgment on the policies of higher authorities. “That is a matter for public opinion. I therefore would not attempt to answer such a hypothetical question as you put up.”

  McMahon tried another tack. “General, there are some fundamental basic differences between the government and yourself as to the wisdom of the best course to pursue in the East; that is true?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Do you consider, General, that it comes within the province of a theater commander to register publicly with persons in political life, or out of it, for that matter, his differences of opinion while he is still in active charge of the theater?”

  “I believe the theater commander has the responsibility of registering his views as he might see fit, if they are honest views and not in contradiction to any implementing directives that he may have received,” MacArthur said. He allowed himself to bristle slightly as he riposted: “I do not believe the implication of your question, that any segment of American society shall be so gagged that the truth and the full truth shall not be brought out. I believe it is in the interest, the public interest, that diverse opinions on any controversial issue shall be fully aired.” MacArthur had never joined the chorus that called Truman soft on communism, but now he likened the administration to the Kremlin on one critical matter. “The totalitarian and the Soviet method is entirely in contradiction to that”—the airing of differences of opinion. “They do muzzle certain segments of society.” The U.S. government should not. “I do not believe that is the American way. And if your question is intended to mean that I would be subservient to and not register within the proper processes my opinions, I would refute it at once. Otherwise you do not get what is the foundation of the very liberty that we breathe, that the people are entitled to have the facts, that the judgment of the government itself is subject to their opinion and to their control, and in order to exercise that, they are entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Senator.”

  McMahon asked if MacArthur would allow one of his brigadier generals to air opinions that differed from his.

  “I wouldn’t have a brigadier general or anyone else on my staff that didn’t freely and frankly give me his opinion in contradiction to my own,” MacArthur said emphatically. “The very value of a subordinate is the freedom with which he expresses his initiative.”

  “Now, General, we are not talking about the same thing, I don’t think,” McMahon rejoined. “You see, General, what I was raising was the question of the advisability, if not the propriety, of any subordinate military officer to take his differences of opinion, on a governmental policy, when he is in the military command, and chain of command, to people in political life.”

  “I do not know what you mean by ‘people in political life,’ Senator,” MacArthur said.

  MacArthur should have seen it coming. “We have your answer, General, in the letter to Mr. Martin,” McMahon said.

  MacArthur threw the challenge back at McMahon. “It seems to me that the American people are entitled to certain basic facts when it involves the lives of their sons and, perhaps, the future of our country.”

  McMahon again shifted approach. “Who is overwhelmingly the main enemy, in your opinion?” he asked.

  “Communism, in my opinion,” MacArthur said.

  “When you talk about communism, do you mean as evidenced in Red China, or the Kremlin?”

  “I mean all over the world, including the interior of many of the fine democratic countries of the world.”

  “General, where is the source and brains of this conspiracy?”

  MacArthur sensed trouble. “How would I know?” he offered.

  “Would you think that the Kremlin was the place that might be the loci?”

  “I might say that it is one of the loci.”

  “Would you say it was one of the main loci, the main place?”

  “I think the world public opinion would so locate it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I say, I should think that the world public opinion would so locate it.”

  “You would not differ from that opinion, General?” Before MacArthur could answer, McMahon pushed further: “General, if we were to fight a victorious war with China, will you tell this committee how the strength of the Soviet Union, the armed strength of the Soviet Union, would be impaired—that is, assuming she does not come into the war?”

  MacArthur declined to venture an opinion. “As I have said so frequently, Senator, our purpose, as I see it, in the Korean war, is to force China to stop her aggression in North Korea. It does not necessarily mean the overwhelming of China. It simply means that sufficient pressure be brought upon her to make her stop killing our boys by the thousands in Korea. Just how that might impinge with reference to the Soviet forces is purely speculative.”

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  HENRY CABOT LODGE offered MacArthur a respite. The Massachusetts Republican praised the clarity of the general’s description of recent past policy before inviting him to prescribe policy for the immediate future. “There is only one point that I would like to have elucidated: whether you still advocate bombing or any aerial reconnaissance of the enemy bases on the northern bank of the Yalu.”

  MacArthur was happy to oblige. “I would advocate that the Chinese, the Red Chinese government, be served notice that if they continued this type of predatory attack in North Korea and refused to consider terms of an armistice and ceasefire, that after a reasonable period of time we should exercise such military sanctions and economic sanctions as would be necessary to force him to stop. That would unquestionably involve bombing of the bases on the other side of the Yalu.”

  “But that proposition has not been approved or disapproved by the joint chiefs, has it?”

  “I have basic directives that we shall not bomb beyond the Yalu.”

  “Do you think that our Air Force today is big enough to undertake bombing missions in the Far East and at the same time retain enough power to act as a deterrent to the Kremlin?” Lodge asked.

  “I think that it is big enough to handle the situation in the Far East without serious detriment to any other program we have.”

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  J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT resumed the Democratic cross-examination. “You said in answer to a question by the senator from Connecticut”—McMahon—“that the enemy, and it is important, I think, that we try to identify the enemy, is communism,” the Arkansas senator said.

  “That is correct,” MacArthur replied.

  “What is your concept of communism? I mean is this the communism of Marx and Engels, or is it the communism as practiced by the Kremlin. Or just what do you mean?”

  “Communism has many various factors,” MacArthur said. “The great threat in what is called present communism is the imperialistic tendency or the lust of power beyond their own geographical combines. It is their effort to enslave the individual to the concepts of the state. It is the establishment of autocracy that squeezes out every one of the freedoms which we value so greatly.”

  Fulbright asked whether a country like China, ruled by communists, could ever be dissociated from the control of the Kremlin.

  “I have never said the Chinese were under the control of the Kremlin,” MacArthur disclaimed.


  “You don’t believe they are?”

  “I believe there is an interlocking of interests between Communist China and the Kremlin. The degree of control and influence that the Kremlin may have is quite problematical.”

  “Well, do you think—”

  “The main issues in Asia are the ones that I put forth in my speech.” And the foremost issue was bringing the war in Korea to a successful close. “The great question is how you are going to end it. Are you going to let it go on indefinitely, destroying the fabric of society, or are you going to make an effort to end it? Are you going to let it go on indefinitely, on the plea that a still greater calamity might follow? You certainly have a tremendous calamity on your hands right now. You may avoid a future calamity. It is my belief that if you bring the Korean war to a successful conclusion, you will put off and diminish the possibility of a third world war. It is my own belief, if you continue this thing indefinitely, it will eventually overtake you. It will spread. I believe that the plan and the policy I have offers the greatest hope for not having a third world war.”

  MacArthur then qualified his statement. “Those are my opinions. I am not trying to force their acceptance.” He acknowledged his limitations and evinced some resentment at being questioned on matters beyond his expertise. “I have a vast experience in the Orient. I have been there the last fourteen years, and I am glad indeed to place my views before you. But to attempt to have me pose here as an expert on things that I have had no direct connection with places me in a very false position.”

  “Well, I do not think you are posing as one,” Fulbright responded. “But most of us regard you as an expert whether you pose as one or not. But you can’t help that.”

  “Well, Senator, if you do, you are wrong.”

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  BY THE AFTERNOON of the second day, MacArthur was repeating himself for the third and fourth times, responding to the questions of senators who chiefly wanted to get themselves on the record as interlocutors of the celebrated soldier. The Associated Press tallied the words MacArthur spoke during his two days with the committees: more than ninety thousand, enough to fill a respectable novel. When MacArthur announced that he was going to fly to New York that evening to rest at his suite in the Waldorf, none of the committee members objected. Some doubtless wished they could do the same.