Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam
I'm old enough to remember when General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of duty by President Harry Truman on April 11, 1951.
We were fighting a limited war in Korea as part of a United Nations force. The North Koreans had attacked South Korea and took over the whole country. With US help the North Koreans were beaten back all the way to the northern border of North Korea. Then China entered the war and attacked. The UN troops were not allowed to pursue the Chinese over the border into Manchuria. Douglas MacArthur wanted to attack China through Korea and also from Formosa using the army of the the leader of the Nationalist Chinese Chiang Kai-shek. He felt like this would be the end of Communist China. Harry Truman did not agree. I think I remember him saying something like, "Chiang Kai-shek's army couldn't fight their way out of a Chinese whore house" or something like that. Because of public statements by Gen. MacArthur in which he disagreed with his Commander in Chief, he was relieved of duty. In that case there was a difference of opinion on how limited the military action should be. Subsequently, the UN forces were driven back (or retreated) to the 38th parallel and the war ended with the same division of Korea that it began with.
Who knows what the world might be like today if Korea was united under democracy and China was united under democracy of some type.
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Exactly why Presidents should stick to public policy and leave strategy to the military. But this is all politics and they wanted a divided Korea and a strong China in the end. Nobody is that stupid