Relief of Douglas MacArthur

[6] In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee investigation into the affair in October 1949, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, doubted that there would ever be another large-scale amphibious operation.

The son of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr., a recipient of the Medal of Honor for action during the American Civil War,[8] he had graduated at the top of his West Point class of 1903,[9] but never attended an advanced service school except for the engineer course in 1908.

[10] He had a distinguished combat record in World War I, and had served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1930 to 1935, working closely with Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, despite occasional clashes over the military budget.

[18] President Truman met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other advisors that day at Blair House and approved the actions already taken by MacArthur and Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

[37] MacArthur's early ambitions for an amphibious operation against North Korea had to be shelved due to the deteriorating situation in the south, which compelled him to commit the formation earmarked for the assault, the 1st Cavalry Division, to the defence of the Pusan Perimeter,[38] to which the Eighth Army retreated in August.

Should the Soviet Union intervene, MacArthur was to immediately retreat to the 38th parallel; but in the case of Chinese intervention, he was to keep fighting "as long as action by UN military forces offers a reasonable chance of successful resistance".

[70] The meeting, which had no agenda and no structure, took the form of a free-wheeling discussion between the President and his advisors on one hand, and MacArthur and the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Arthur Radford, on the other.

[79] He added that the matter had been raised at Wake Island, but no one else recalled this,[79] particularly not Truman, who, unaware of these discussions, told reporters on 26 October that Koreans and not Americans would occupy the border areas.

[88] Truman had touched upon one of the most sensitive issues in civil-military relations in the post-World War II period: civilian control of nuclear weapons, which was enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.

[92] On 24 December 1950, while responding to a formal request from the Pentagon, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required.

[99] The next day Truman met with the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean,[91] and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military control.

[108][109] In interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said, Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging.

"[112] In contrast to MacArthur, all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the majority of EXCOMM urged Kennedy to first bomb and then invade Cuba, claiming that a blockade would show weakness and entice the Soviets to become more aggressive.

[123] Major General Courtney Whitney gave MacArthur a legal opinion that this applied "solely to formal public statements and not to communiqués, correspondence or personal conversations".

MacArthur was informed of it by the Joint Chiefs on 20 March, and he warned the new commander of the Eighth Army, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, that political constraints might soon impose limits on his proposed operations.

[128] On 23 March, MacArthur issued a communiqué about offering a ceasefire to the Chinese:Of even greater significance than our tactical successes has been the clear revelation that this new enemy, Red China, of such exaggerated and vaunted military power, lacks the industrial capability to provide adequately many critical items necessary to the conduct of modern war.

These basic facts being established, there should be no insuperable difficulty in arriving at decisions on the Korean problem if the issues are resolved on their own merits, without being burdened by extraneous matters not directly related to Korea, such as Formosa or China's seat in the United Nations.

The content of this particular intercept was known by only a very few of Truman's closest advisers, two being Paul Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, and his associate, Charles Burton Marshall.

On 15 March 1951, the day after Seoul had been recaptured a second time, Truman had responded to a reporter's question about whether UN forces would again be allowed to move north of the 38th Parallel by saying that it would be "a tactical matter for the field commander".

Author James Edwin Alexander expressed the opinion that the Bole and its crew were made "sitting ducks" by MacArthur trying to provoke the Chinese into attacking a U.S. warship in an attempt to expand the conflict.

[172] General Marshall expressed this conflict in his testimony before the Senate: It arises from the inherent difference between the position of a commander whose mission is limited to a particular area and a particular antagonist, and the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and the President, who are responsible for the total security of the United States...and must weigh the interests and objectives in one part of the world with those in others to attain balance...There is nothing new in this divergence, in our military history... What is new and what brought about the necessity for General MacArthur's removal is the wholly unprecedented situation of a local Theater Commander publicly expressing his displeasure at, and his disagreement with, the foreign policy of the United States.

It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.

[182]Newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times opined that MacArthur's "hasty and vindictive" relief was due to foreign pressure, particularly from the United Kingdom and the British socialists in Attlee's government.

[195] The two committees were jointly chaired by Senator Richard Russell Jr. Fourteen witnesses were called: MacArthur, Marshall, Bradley, Collins, Vandenberg, Sherman, Adrian S. Fisher, Acheson, Wedemeyer, Johnson, Oscar C. Badger II, Patrick J. Hurley, and David G. Barr and O'Donnell.

[196] Vandenberg questioned whether the Air Force could be effective against targets in Manchuria, and Bradley noted that the Communists were also waging limited war in Korea, having not attacked UN airbases or ports, or their own "privileged sanctuary" in Japan.

[205] The election was won by the Republican candidate, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower,[206] whose administration ramped up the pressure on the Chinese in Korea with conventional bombing and renewed threats of using nuclear weapons.

In 1977, Major General John K. Singlaub publicly criticized proposed cuts in the size of American forces in South Korea, and was summarily relieved by President Jimmy Carter for making statements "inconsistent with announced national security policy".

[212] During the Gulf War in 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney relieved the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Michael Dugan, for showing "poor judgment at a very sensitive time" in making a series of statements to the media during a visit to Saudi Arabia.

[217] In February 2012, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis published a report entitled "Dereliction of Duty II" in which he criticized senior military commanders for misleading Congress about the war in Afghanistan,[218] especially General David Petraeus, noting that:A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our country, by the vast majority of our uniformed Service Members, and the population at large: David Petraeus is a real war hero—maybe even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower.

[226] By 2008, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, felt obliged to pen an open letter in which he reminded all servicemen that "The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times.