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What Would MacArthur Do?
As our editor, Troy Senik, reminded me, yesterday was the 70th anniversary of Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. Troy knows my next book is on MacArthur, and when he mentioned the date to me, it made me cast my mind back to that time and place, as well as the cause that led MacArthur to his landing on Leyte—and into one of the iconic photos of World War Two.
By that October it had been a long, hard slog from the night in March 1942, when MacArthur reluctantly followed President Roosevelt’s explicit order and abandoned his forces on Corregidor and Bataan to leave for Australia. There he arrived to take command of the Southwest Pacific Area, a stretch of ocean and islands the size of North America from Alaska to Guatemala. He had no navy, hardly any air force, and no army except the Australians, against an enemy who enjoyed overwhelming numbers, as well as air and naval superiority. Moreover, MacArthur knew that three-quarters of all future US forces would be shipped first to Europe, and that he would have to share what was left with Admiral Nimitz in the Central Pacific.
Yet MacArthur won his war, not only fending off the Japanese advance on Australia, but then taking the offensive and painstakingly building up his forces until they were strong enough to advance over 2,800 miles in a series of grinding campaigns from New Guinea to the Solomons, with a single goal: liberating the Philippines.
That task proved harder and bloodier than he had anticipated; especially the taking of Manila. But in MacArthur’s mind, liberating the Philippines was both a matter of strategic necessity—cutting Japan’s Pacific empire in two—and of American honor: to redeem the broken promise that not only MacArthur but President Roosevelt and Congress had made to the Philippine people that it would protect them from aggression.
Unfortunately, redeeming American honor is not something that our present administration spends much time thinking about—any more than it does defending our national and strategic interests. Instead, it’s allowed long-standing alliances with countries like Israel and Britain to fray and unravel, and solemn promises to protect the security and territorial integrity of countries like Iraq and Ukraine to evaporate.
Now, there are many myths surrounding MacArthur’s life and career. I’ve found most of those also evaporate on close inspection.
For example, his famous wade-ashore-landing on Leyte on October 20 wasn’t staged; it unfolded exactly as it happened, and while MacArthur and his party were under enemy fire too.
And no, he never earned the nickname “Dugout Doug” by his behavior in the Philippines. Far from living like a king on Corregidor, he exposed himself constantly to enemy fire there, and throughout the Pacific campaign.
And no, he never planned to use atom bombs to start World War Three in Korea—and that was not the reason Truman had him fired.
But there is one myth that is true. MacArthur did say, and firmly believed, “There is no substitute for victory.” Looking now at the current chaos in which America finds itself in fighting ISIS, it is intriguing to think what Douglas MacArthur would do both to turn back the tide of battle and to restore American honor.
First, as the first American practitioner (as opposed to theorist) of airpower, MacArthur would immediately step up the lackluster Obama air campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria to 24/7 intensity, in conjunction with US ground troops. He would find the current taboo about “boots on the ground” absurd and pernicious. When he said, “Anyone committing US ground forces to a land war in Asia should have his head examined,” he was thinking about an open-ended conflict with Red China and allies like Vietnam, not a containable battlefield along the upper Euphrates.
All the same, he would point out that it’s absurd to engage in a war unless you have an overall strategy, even a grand strategy, for winning that will draw together allies and coalition partners. MacArthur was appalled that Truman had no strategy for Korea other than stalemate; he sensed something similar would happen in Vietnam, which is why he warned Kennedy against it. MacArthur said, “It’s fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” It’s a lesson Americans have had to learn far too often.
Third, and most important, that will to win comes from thinking about not just what you’re fighting against but what you are fighting for. In MacArthur’s case, those had to be the Western values of democracy, freedom, and, yes, even the principles of compassion and spiritual humility embodied in Christianity. Those were the timeless humane values MacArthur believed an America at war had to stand up for and publicly commit itself to, whether it was against Nazi Germany or imperial Japan or Communism.
Where’s that commitment today? What are we fighting for? It’s the question MacArthur would have demanded we answer before sending in a single soldier or dropping a single bomb.
Unfortunately, it’s also the question this administration can’t answer — or perhaps doesn’t dare answer.
Published in General
I heard that, after he died, Harry Truman, finding himself in the other place, immediately made a deal with the “Party Boss” to get Margaret good reviews by the “Give’Em Hell Gazette” music critic.
Regards,
Jim
Are you OK? You seemed to have missed the part where Obama was Commander in Chief. 100% his fault and nobody else. It was Obama’s plan, it was Obama’s execution, it was Obama’s choice. The magic loose canon from Arizona didn’t have anything to do with it. Besides to class McCain as a neo-con is a shade bizarre. More like Obama propaganda than anything resembling reality.
Regards,
Jim
It is you who are plunging into what you don’t understand. Stop trying to help Islam micromanage its internal purges. We have an absolute undeniable interest in Jihad. It is their program to annihilate us. We have every right and reason to demand that they denounce this. Jihad is the real war-crazed gang. If we challenge this then we have moral footing. Otherwise it is all absurd. Fight or run we will doom ourselves into blindly accepting evil. When Reagan called out the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” he defined the issue. We must call out Jihad as the issue.
Regards,
Jim
Until they care what we think “Jihad” means, we will lose. Until we convince them, they will not care.
1) Obama was CiC during Iraq? No I don’t think so. Iraq is squarely Bush’s fault. No two ways about it.
2) Obama’s policies in Libya and elsewhere were the same as those of the neo-cons in the GOP. No difference. But now you want to somehow say there’s a “crises of leadership”, when the GOP’s own leadership was fully supportive of all that happened. Nice try.
3) John McCain isn’t a neo-con? The man has never seen a war he didn’t want to jump into.
It’s kind of tough to criticize Obama, when the man the GOP wanted to be president instead of Obama is even more clueless, reckless and dangerous to America’s foreign policy than Obama himself.
Or did we forget already John McCain’s visits to Libya and Syria and meetings with all sorts of terrorists there?
I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I suspect neither do you.
First you claim that we must wage a war against “jihad”, and that will separate out the “good” Muslims from the bad.
Except you don’t seem to understand what Jihad means…to them…and why going in guns blazing talking about something from a position of utter ignorance…might be a bad idea.
They’re all Jihadists. Every single group of people involved in fighting there is doing so under the call of Jihad.
So all you’re saying is: “lets declare war on Islam”.
Go for it bud. See how well that will turn out.
You want to talk about Reagan? Reagan pulled US troops out of Lebanon after he figured out what a sectarian mess he’d gotten US soldiers in, and decided that it wasn’t worth a single American soldier’s life to fight the battles of these crazy lunatics. Let the crazies kill themselves.
Instead, you’ve decided that after listening to some radio talk shows, you’ve figured out what “jihad” is, and how to use to to gain allies in the ME. Great. Great idea. Worked out real well last time around.
Man, you have a stranglehold on the media narratives, don’t you? Word perfect — congratulations.
Don’t need to read anyone’s narrative to figure out that when you go into a country, and turn it over to people who lived in Iran just a couple of years earlier, financed by Iran, armed by Iran, protected by Iranian-trained militias…all you’ve done is created an Iranian proxy state which strengthens Iran.
Nor does one need any special powers of deduction to figure out that when John McCain goes to visit Sunni terrorist in Libya or in Syria, and asks for them to be financed and armed by the US, you end up strengthening them.
Or when we want to bomb Assad, not considering who the opposition to Assad is.
And on and on.
Yes, exactly so. We have not given those fighting or those not fighting any alternative. I am not talking about some particular intervention. I am talking about an overall mission strategy to get stability back in the region. Only by insisting on the end of Jihad can we have any effect. Those Muslim governments that would risk this stance would be allies and might very well do the majority of the fighting.
There is no other way to form a winning coalition. Again we can fight or we can just run but neither will solve the problem unless we have a moral consensus that has meaning in the middle east. As long as the Jihad card can be played nothing will change.
Active Jihadism constitutes treason, sedition, and subversion under our law or by anyone’s objective evaluation. We simply can not accept this. Either internally or externally.
Regards,
Jim
Like I said: word perfect — you’ve been well trained.
But again, this is all meaningless terms. “Jihad” isn’t the problem if the people who we are supporting there are also engaged in a “Jihad”…in their case, against Assad. Or the people fighting against ISIS are also engaged in a “Jihad” against ISIS.
It’s not a term that has any meaning, and certainly one that would build a “coalition”. It does precisely the opposite. It turns the entire religion of Islam into the enemy.
As I said, if that’s what you want to do, go for it. It adds nothing as to why this matters to us, and certainly adds nothing to our “coalition”.
If you want Saudi and UAE and Kuwait and Jordan to join your fight (which they already are), then this approach does the precise opposite.
I could care less whether these people are engaged in “jihad” or not, or against whom. I could care less what the implications of this are for their own laws and their own societies.
All this is, is a call for greater involvement into something that doesn’t pertain to us, and turning even those that are nominally on our side, against us.
Of course, I’m not sure why we even care to intervene in a fight between Iran and it’s proxies, and AQ and its proxies. We should be happy they are fighting each other.
It has the most fundamental meaning and is the lynch pin of their problem. More involvement or less involvement by us has little meaning. The question is why are we involved. With Jihad as the answer it is simply a matter of self-defense.
Regards,
Jim