MacArthur as a bad general. He failed in the Philippines in 1941, he wasted time and lives in New Guinea, he wasted lives in the invasion of the Philippines for personal glory. Since when does a statement like "I shall return" work as a driver for military strategy?
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential Library, The Korean War
www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov
I measured it moments ago and you were close. It was 100 miles from the Yalu River. MacArthur was told by General Willoughby, his intelligence officer, that the Chinese lacked the troops to get into combat. When the Commies hit at Unsan, 100 miles deep into North Korea, the Commies then pulled back. This tricked the Americans into believing the Communists would not fight.
www.brookings.edu
I say the Japanese were the winners. And MacArthur lacked the troops and equipment to beat off the Japanese. I won't divert now to New Guinea. I saw his I shall Return as a hopeful promise. And he was based in Australia after he left the Philippines as you know.
I don't believe our troops reached the Yalu River. I believe they got about 100 miles away. The Chinese attack was earlier than you claim at Unsan. Bear also in mind the terrain. A mountain area that was deep in snow. I recall that war and recall the massed attacks by the Chinese where the first attacking troops were not armed at all. The Chinese sent them to die to waste our bullets.Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential Library, The Korean War
In spite of warnings issued by the Chinese Government, the United Nations forces moved toward the Yalu River, marking the North Korean border with Manchuria. Discounting the significance of initial Chinese attacks in late October, MacArthur ordered the UNC to launch an offensive, taking the forces to the Yalu. In late November the Chinese attacked in full strength, pushing the UNC in disarray south of the 38th parallel with the communist forces seizing the South Korean capital, Seoul.
Korean War | Eisenhower Presidential Library
He couldn’t have beaten the Japanese, but he could have put up a much better fight. He screwed up the defense by the numbers. There wasn’t anything that he did right including evacuating on FDR’s orders and leaving Wainwright holding the bag.
Not true, the Geneva accord stated election under International observers that included the people who were in Geneva, including the US, Britain. France. Russia. China, and the Vietnamese from both parts, it was the US who said they would not be bound to honour the outcome.
I mostly agree with the above. I am not very well informed on his defense but know he was removed by a Submarine. If he was ordered out, he was obliged to obey such orders.
Give it up you sound more stupid by the day.
owning you and making you smaller with every post
You deny historical recorded facts, next you will tell us there was no jewish holocaust, you live in some twilight zone but it's one of your own making, you are one sad case.
I provided recorded facts which proved you wrong
www.usmessageboard.com
Great post.This OP is about the Tet Offensive (and warmongering myths of a “stab in the back” by Democrats / Liberals that supposedly prevented U.S. “victory”) but it has morphed into other subjects, even to a discussion of General Douglas McArthur’s virtues and faults.
I want to return a bit to the person of Ho Chi Minh, who was old at the time of the Tet Offensive and together with General Võ Nguyên Giáp had opposed the Tet Uprising as adventurist and unnecessary. Born in Central Vietnam in 1890 to a Confucian scholar father, Ho died in 1969. After the war was finally won decisively, the Southern city of Saigon was renamed after him.
Ho was not only the “George Washington” of united Vietnam’s independence struggle, he had extensively referred to the U.S. Founding Father’s in his Proclamation of Vietnam’s Independence in 1946, before crowds of hundreds of thousands rallying in the Haiphong & Hanoi areas. This was of course a conscious effort to stay the hand of U.S. imperialism. However, first Great Britain and then Uncle Sam decided to back the re-introduction of French colonial power through force and murderous violence. But Ho’s history as a Vietnamese leader goes back long before that first declaration of an independent Vietnam in 1946, as the OP below and links I provided in my comments outlines.
Ho Chi Minh, like many others involved in nationalist and decolonial movements of his time, was first attracted to the new ideas of European democratic socialism. But when the European Socialist and Capitalist Parties opposed actually doing anything to liberate their colonies despite giving lip-service to Wilsonian “self-determination,” Ho joined the worldwide communist movement. Ho toughened himself up as a true revolutionary and worked closely with the early Comintern, especially in Asia but also in Moscow and West Europe. He was at one time almost purged as a nationalist, but I think he understood that his movement and probably he himself would die if he broke with the Soviet Union or China.
Ho had traveled and lived in the U.S. earlier as young man, making his living as a sailor, cook & baker. Early on he became fluent in French (as a teenager he was apparently something of a “Francophile.”) He learned Chinese, and even English. His personal intellectual background was in no way shallow.
Anyway, here is a link well worth reading:
The Radicalization of Ho Chi Minh
In 1919 a small nondescript man in a rented suit arrived at the Palace of Versailles seeking an audience with officials at the Peace Conference where he hoped to present his demands on behalf of the people of Vietnam. Inspired by United States President Wilson's diplomatic point for peace that...
Excuses excuses. President Eisenhower said that Ho Chi Minh would win a fair election by a blowout.
No he wasn't. Doug retired in 1937. FDR recalled him to active duty in mid 1941, but he was still a Philippine Field Marshal. He had the choice of evacuating or leading his troops into captivity. He choose to run rather than to stay with the troops he had led to defeat.
Commanders who flee alway have parties willing to run them down. FDR had little choice than to rely on his oldest commanders to defend against Japan. What you have managed to accomplish with me is to see me studying him a lot more. At the end, we may both think alike. MacArthur would have been put to death by the Japanese and FDR saved him from extinction.
No, Ike said HE WAS TOLD that Minh would win. How often have we seen our intelligence sources be wrong about even more critical facts than the probable results of an election.
