There Is No “We” in “MacArthur”

Apr 17, 2021

3 min read

Douglas MacArthur was about to get fired.

He believed that he always knew best, and he was not a fan of oversight. When evacuating the Philippines during the Second World War, he said “I came through and I shall return.” The White House asked him to change the quote to “We shall return,” but MacArthur refused.

There is no “we” in “MacArthur.”

By 1950, General MacArthur was the commander of the UN forces in Korea. He planned an amphibious assault on North Korea at Inchon, which Omar Bradley called “the worst possible place ever selected for an amphibious landing.” MacArthur replied, “We shall land at Inchon, and I shall crush them.”

Maybe he was improving. He did say “we” that one time.

The landing at Inchon was a success.

Invited to speak at the National Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, MacArthur instead sent a statement to be read aloud that contradicted the Truman Administration’s policy in the Pacific. Truman was furious (MacArthur had used the hot-button word “appeasement” to describe Truman’s strategy) and first broached the subject of firing MacArthur. In response, his Secretary of Defense told him that MacArthur was “one of the greatest, if not the greatest generals of our generation,” a statement MacArthur himself no doubt agreed with.

Truman fired the Secretary of Defense instead.

He went to meet with MacArthur on Wake Island later that year. MacArthur snubbed the President’s lunch invitation, which didn’t bother Truman; what the former haberdasher was peeved at was the “greasy ham and eggs cap” MacArthur wore.

But the president did issue an order that all military officials should clear public statements with the State Department before making them and “refrain from direct communications on military or foreign policy” with the media. Despite this, the general went right on giving statements to the press about military and foreign policy. He also had conversations with foreign ambassadors about expanding the Korean War into a wider global conflict aimed at permanently defeating the Chinese.

There is no “refrain” in “MacArthur.”

The war started going better for the Americans, which would bring them into direct confrontation with Communist China, an ally of the Soviet Union. Wanting to avoid World War III, Truman proposed a cease-fire agreement between all parties. When MacArthur heard of it, he ordered an advance north of the 38th Parallel before the peace talks constrained his military operations.

Truman said about this, “I was ready to kick him into the North China Sea.”

He held a meeting with his advisers about the possibility of relieving MacArthur of command. Harry’s mother-in-law had already weighed in, telling Bess Truman that since Harry had only made it to the rank of Captain when he was in the army, he didn’t have the authority to fire the general.

Bess had to remind her mother, not for the first time, that her husband was the President of the United States.

What clinched it for Truman was the notion that if he didn’t fire MacArthur, the public would think that the military was not under civilian control. Truman later said, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

Civilian control of the military: restored.

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