If you want a truly rewarding reading experience, find Dean Acheson's memoir's, Present at the Creation. This ultimate patrician, erudite, arrogant, brilliant, is also thoughtful and honest when it comes to his own shortcomings and the mistakes he and others made when in positions of power. It is also wonderful to read he encomium to Harry Truman, gentleman farmer, failed haberdasher, wise, crafty politician, and hero to the man he elevated to Secretary of State, replacing the aging retired Gen. George Catlett Marshall.
In his memoirs, Acheson talks in detail of the events in the early weeks and months of the Korean War. After the initial disaster, in which the US and ROK forces were pushed into a small corner known as the Pusan perimeter, he talks about how skeptical they were of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's plan for an amphibious assault behind the DPRK lines at Inchon. When the plan worked, even more brilliantly than could have been hoped - when, in fact, MacArthur's claim that the North Korean troops were overstretched, overtired, underfed, and ready to quit all proved true, the casual green light was given to push back above the parallel, take Pyongyang, and drive the communist forces to the Chinese border.
The UN forces were so successful, however, that they made the same mistake the North Koreans had made. They were overstretched. Their supply lines were extremely vulnerable. They put an understrength, undertrained, and easily-spooked ROK division between two American-dominated division, splitting their forces, and providing an opportunity for fresh enemy troops to drive a wedge between the main body of troops driving the reds back.
Which, of course, is exactly what happened. Even as reports started to trickle in of Chinese forces being captured; even as reports of increased border crossings at the Yalu started to make brows crinkle in Washington; even as the ROK division was effectively wiped out, opening a huge gap in UN lines, MacArthur continued to pooh-pooh the idea that (a) the Chinese had landed with both feet and at least a hand; (b) that by pushing so fast to the Yalu River he had overstretched his logistical table, rendering his troops vulnerable; and (c) that he could possibly be defeated. Acheson is candid when he admits that, because of MacArthur's record in the Second World War (he lost fewer men in his entire campaign, from his retreat in the Philippines to the signing of the surrender papers on the USS Missouri than Eisenhower lost in Italy, or Nimitz lost in the amphibious assault on Iwo Jima; it was accepted that, having spent most of his adult life on the eastern side of the Pacific rim, he had some kind of insight in to what was then known as "the Asian mind", so that what he said about what the Koreans and Chinese were thinking was spot on) and the brilliant success at Inchon and at taking Pyongyang, they gave him too long a leash. When it became clear that the Chinese were indeed at full throttle - had, in fact surrounded the First Marine Division at the Chosen Reservoir - Acheson, for one, realized the mistake lay not so much with MacArthur, but with the civilians in Washington, including himself, who had authorized the overextension of UN forces, creating the situation in the first place. In other words, they listened to the commander on the ground, who should have known what was going on, but didn't. The resulting contretemps between Truman and MacArthur all stemmed from this initial mistake, and both Acheson and Truman recognized it.
There aren't too many parallels here to our present situation, except this - in Korea, as much of a slog as it was for the next two-and-a-half years, the goal of a return to the status quo ante bellum was always the desired result; indeed, the only sticking point in negotiations for over a year was the status of DPRK and Chinese prisoners, many of whom had no desire to return home, but whom the Chinese and North Koreans demanded be returned without question. The final cease-fire, in place for fifty-three years, has held, despite many rumblings. In Iraq, we have no goals. Democratization, freedom, standing up and standing down - these are words that have no meaning from a military point of view (or any other point of view, not really). Words like victory, defeat - these are equally meaningless because, again, we have no goals in Iraq (this is why I didn't like Sen. Reid's comment this past weekend; he was wrong only because the word cannot apply to the situation in Iraq). MacArthur was wrong, but the fault, as Acheson reiterates time and again, was his and Truman's and the Joint Chiefs, not MacArthur's. They should not have listened to the commander in the field.
Virtual Tin Cup
