July 8, 1950— Having claimed that he knew “the Asiatic mind,” and acclaimed as the architect of Allied victory in the Pacific only five years before, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was named commander of the UN troops desperately trying to repel Communist forces from taking control of the entire Korean peninsula.
At the
time, the appointment seemed logical, even inevitable, considering the
general’s decades of experience, bravery, intellect, and a strategic skill
manifested during WWII with an “island-hopping” campaign that minimized loss of
life.
But,
within a year, MacArthur’s overweening ego and hubris would imperil US troops,
threaten a wider conflict, and precipitate a historic showdown concerning
civilian authority over American armed forces with President Harry Truman.
Some
signs, even within the first two weeks after Communist forces invaded South Korea,
were already ominous for MacArthur’s leadership. Aides were initially reluctant
to break the news of the attack to their boss, and even after learning of it, for
the first 24 hours he downplayed its severity.
If he
could get the 1st Cavalry Division into action, he told GOP foreign-policy
maven (and future Secretary of State) John Foster Dulles, “Why, heavens, you’d
see these fellows scuttle up to the Manchurian border so quick, you would see
no more of them,” according to Bruce Cumings’ The Korean War: A History.
When he
was prevailed upon at last to depart from Tokyo (where he was serving as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan) for the first of a series of one-day
flyovers over Korea, he veered sharply towards alarm, telling Truman that South
Korean forces were in no position to repel the invaders without American
support.
One
military observer—like MacArthur, often mentioned as a Presidential candidate—Dwight Eisenhower, was skeptical but not surprised that his fellow WWII hero was
not at the top of his game. Privately, he wondered if MacArthur, now 70, might
be too old for command.
Eisenhower,
who had noted acidly that he had “studied theatrics” under MacArthur as his
aide in the Philippines in the 1930s, would have had the personal knowledge and
credibility to gain immediate public approval for a decision to relieve his old
boss of command. But MacArthur’s superior at the moment was Truman, who lacked
the stature of the commander of US forces in Europe in the last war.
Two and a
half months after his appointment, MacArthur pulled off the kind of unexpected,
daring move for which he had become known by ordering an amphibious assault on
Inchon, the port city of Seoul that, because of its tides and lack of beaches, was
deemed by MacArthur’s subordinate Gen. Edward Almond, “the worst possible place”
for such an operation.
Inchon
achieved the surprise MacArthur desired, and he predicted to Truman that US
troops would be home for Christmas. But instead of stopping at the 38th
Parallel, the point at which America’s allies had agreed would restore the
division between North and South Korea at the start of the conflict, the
commander “went ahead to the Yalu frontier and set up an enormous disaster, which
clouded his reputation,” according to historian David Fromkin.
“There’s a
spot where the mountains go down on a north-south basis,” Fromkin explained to C-Span’s
Brian Lamb in a September 1995 interview on “Booknotes,” “and if you’re
a commander going there, you don’t want to get in that position because you
have to split your troops. But he [MacArthur] did and he shouldn’t have; he
went all the way up to the Chinese border, although there were signs that if he
did so, they’d come in against us with their limitless manpower.”
The
counterattack by the Chinese forces reversed all the gains by the US at Inchon.
Communist momentum was only blunted when Matthew Ridgway took over command of
the US Eighth Army in Korea and re-energized the demoralized troops.
By now,
MacArthur was not only violating Truman’s directive to clear any statements
with the White House first, but alarming the Joint Chiefs of Staff and allies
with his urging that China lay down its arms or face “a decision by the United
Nations to depart from its tolerant efforts to contain the war…[that] would
doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse.”
He provided GOP leaders eager to score points against Truman over the military stalemate
with a soundbite for taking the war to China: “There is no substitute for
victory.”
Truman’s decision to relieve MacArthur of command led to a firestorm of controversy back home, but it was necessary to preserve the constitutional structure of ultimate Presidential authority over the military.
Just as important, by scotching the
general’s proposal to drop up to 50 nuclear bombs at air bases, depots, and
supply lines to create a radioactive barrier and halt Chinese and North Korean
advances, Truman prevented the direct intervention of the Soviet Union in the
conflict—and the possibility of World War III.