Good American Generals: Were there any?

For some reason, I’ve got the American military on my mind, on my mind. I’ve got the American military on my mind. And I’m wondering: Did we ever have any good generals?

I was launched on this avenue of speculation by a recent book review, “Douglas MacArthur’s Brilliant, Controversial Legacy”, by the National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson, discussing a 1000-page doorstop by Arthur Herman, bearing the snappy title Douglas MacArthur, American Warrior.

If you know Vic, you know he spends an inordinate amount of time harrumphing about the Decline of the West, though, unlike Gibbon, he does not ascribe it to the triumph of barbarism and Christianity. However, when Vic isn’t venting, and he’s writing about military history, he (sometimes) has something to say that’s worth hearing. And so it proves in his discussion of Douglas MacArthur’s brilliant, controversial legacy—“controversial” being Vic’s euphemism of choice for “unbelievably god-awful,” for just listen to what Vic has to say about Doug:

“There are a number of writs against MacArthur, but perhaps three stand out. First, there is no doubt that his narcissism could reach obnoxious proportions. His ego was more than just superficial vanity that characteristically led him to stare endlessly in the mirror, pepper his speech liberally with first-person pronouns, and choreograph his public image with corncob pipe, shiny khakis, gold-braided cap, aviator sunglasses, and leather coat. At times his sense of self led to hubris—and nemesis often followed.

…

“Second, MacArthur’s most brilliant victories—the Operation Cartwheel reconquest of much of the Japanese-held South Pacific and the brilliant Inchon landings near the Korean DMZ—were bookended by equally disastrous failures. He was ultimately responsible for, despite warnings, allowing his newly supplied air forces on Luzon to be caught by surprise, hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His incautious approach to the Chinese border in November—albeit approved by almost everyone in Washington—downplayed growing warnings about the bitter cold, the difficult terrain, and the likelihood of the entrance of the huge Chinese Army across the Yalu River. MacArthur for the most part claimed the strategic breakthroughs as his own virtuoso performances by fobbed off the disasters on subordinates and politicians.

…

“Third, MacArthur was not just a controversial man of the Right—so were Generals Curtis LeMay and George S. Patton—but was actually, for nearly 20 years, seriously considered a possible ultra-conservative Republican candidate for the presidency.”

Well, that all sounds pretty bad. But in fact, Vic’s just getting warmed up. The more he writes, the more faults appear. That “brilliant” Operation Cartwheel? Well, some of it was brilliant, but the entire reconquest of the Philippines was, according to Vic, a “costly detour”, undertaken to satisfy MacArthur’s vanity rather than any strategic purpose.¹ U.S. casualties were over 16,000 dead and over 55,000 wounded, while Japanese deaths totaled over 336,000. Civilian casualties were even worse. A “costly detour” indeed!

Oh, and what about Korea? “The split-force advance up the Yalu [prior to the entry of the Chinese army] was poorly planned and conducted and was ultimately MacArthur’s responsibility, however distant he often was in Tokyo. And the pell-mell Army retreat—the longest withdrawal in U.S. military history—was even more wildly and poorly led.” Ouch!

Furthermore, after MacArthur’s dismissal by President Truman, which Hanson grudgingly admits Mac well deserved, General Matthew Ridgeway was called in to pull Mac’s chestnuts out of the fire, which he did, and for which the two-faced MacArthur deceitfully and vindictively abused him behind his back. Classy!

Off the battlefield, Mac could prove “controversial” as well, like the time he came home from the Philippines in 1930 with, well, with a 16-year-old Eurasian mistress in tow, Isabel Rosario Cooper.² And then there was the time, unmentioned by Vic, after the start of the Pacific War when the Japanese army was overwhelming U.S. forces in the Philippines. Mac hadn’t left yet but it was clear that he would be doing so soon. To make sure he would come back, Filipino President Manuel Quezon slipped Mac $500,000 for past services rendered.

As for being a “ultra-conservative Republican,” well, I guess that’s Vic-speak for “raving anti-Semite,” because Mac was one. MacArthur saw communism as a mere subset of an over-arching “Jewish Conspiracy” and once told a British diplomat that Eisenhower should not be president because he had “Jewish blood in his veins.” “Controversial”? I guess so!

Afterwords, Part I
It’s doubly amusing to note that Vic engages in all this Doug-bashing in a favorable review of a book specifically written to refute all the charges made against Doug, charges that, as Vic demonstrates, are totally true! One can only guess that Vic was given marching orders to give Arthur Herman’s exercise in right-wing revisionism a favorable review and he did so, at a cost of forcing him to talk out of both sides of his mouth so aggressively that he sounds, and looks, a lot like Hillary Clinton!³

Afterwords, Part II
Wasn’t my head “Good American Generals: Were there any?” rather than “Douglas MacArthur sucks”? I think so! Actually, I wrote my head after doing a little research on the question of how MacArthur, after an extraordinary career in World War I and a “controversial” but quite likely impressive turn as commandant of West Point, ended up commanding American troops in the Philippines. The story is that Mac was sent there by General John Pershing after Mac married Pershing’s former mistress, Louise Cromwell Brooks, a “flapper and heiress,” according to the (presumably) conservative website Conservapedia. Brooks proved to be no bargain, getting drunk at parties and telling everyone that poor Mac was a “buck private in the bedroom”! No wonder he ended up with Isobel!

Anyway, reading a little about Pershing, I stumbled over this unattractive nugget: even after knowing that the Armistice had been signed, knowing that the war would end on November 11, 1918, he ordered American troops into battle on that last day, and the U.S. sustained 3,500 casualties on November 11, when the war had already been won. Why? To keep the troops from getting soft?

And another thing, or at least another general—actually, another two generals—but first Major General Lloyd Ralston Fredendall, best known for getting his ass kicked at the Kasserine Pass by Rommel’s Afrika Korps. A swaggering tough guy before the guns started shooting, Fredendall was despised by those who served under him in combat as both a moral and physical coward, but he was given his high position by none other than the saintly Gen. George C. Marshall, the anti-MacArthur, who bought Fredenhall’s sizzle and paid for it with the lives of his own troops. So you can’t trust any of them!

Afterwords, Part III
What does one make of MacArthur’s astounding record in post-war Japan, converting a militaristic, near-feudal society into the first functioning democracy the Far East has ever seen? There are a lot of theories, but theories pale in comparison with MacArthur’s achievement. With his vast prestige, particularly among conservatives, MacArthur was probably the one man in the world who could have saved, and did save, post-war Japan from mass starvation, demanding that Congress provide the aid necessary to keep a ruined society alive. Many in Japan still honor MacArthur’s memory and it is right that they do so, because he gave Japan the best government it had ever enjoyed. How few conquerors can say as much!