Hacker News Reader

Comment by sohei | Hacker News Reader

The recent revelations are not at all surprising.

Truman relieved General MacArthur of his command over coalition forces in Korea in large part because he planned and aggressively advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the Chinese.

If you visit the Princeton stacks, you can unearth many Woodrow Wilson School theses advocating the aggressive use of nuclear weapons during Vietnam. Some of the people who authored these papers went on to craft US trade policy from the 1980s through the present. A truly remarkable change of heart.

View on HN

> Truman relieved General MacArthur of his command over coalition forces in Korea in large part because he planned and aggressively advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the Chinese.

This is still debated, and MacArthur later denied it in his testimony to the Senate Inquiry. His removal has a clearer and simpler reason: Truman felt MacArther's communication with the Chinese violated his December directive and preempted the President, while the Joint Chiefs' concern was that "if MacArthur were not relieved, a large segment of our people would charge that civil authorities no longer controlled the military." [1]

The simplest explanation for the removal is that MacArthur tacitly disobeyed the Commander-in-Chief (enraging President Truman).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur#Re...

> The recent revelations are not at all surprising.

You have to be careful with sentences like that. It removes all of the urgency and action from a discussion.

It also adds information. Specifically, that it wasn’t the lack of awareness that led to this situation repeating. This, we should focus our efforts not just on whistleblowing, but on figuring out the gap between the whistle and effective action.

MacArthur was the wack job who, along with Patton and Eisenhower, attacked the poor Bonus Army protestors during the Great Depression. It's pretty much analogous to Occupy Wall Street but with a specific goal.

The Bonus Army was seen as a major threat at the time (imagine the Capital Building protests, but large enough to occupy a large part of the capital). FDR's commencement speech, which took place while they were going on, makes anything said by recent US presidents look tame.

I threat to whom? Hoover sent in the troops and the generals rolled tanks through DC and their encampment. It cost Hoover his reelection and his reputation which was otherwise stellar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Reply on news.ycombinator.com