LOVE: ...What MacArthur saw in Korea, and he says this repeatedly, is that
the struggle against the Soviet empire is in Asia, that Truman and Acheson and
Marshall had it wrong, that the fighting was on the Korean peninsula against
the People's Republic and against the Soviet Union -- that's who he was
fighting. That there was no war in Europe, and so the hot fighting front was
the principal focus, or should be the principal focus, of American activity.
And he saw the build-up in NATO as a rivalry, as an opposing theater, as
wrong-headed, in many ways. Because his men, of course, were dying on the
front lines. The people for whom he cared very deeply and respected highly,
the Korean people, were the ones who were immediately suffering this horrid
Chinese-inspired war. And there's an analogy between that and the way he deals
with the southwest Pacific theater and the Filipinos: personalizes it, he sees
that anyone who opposes his vision is in somehow a rivalry or somehow opposes
him, and is wrong-headed. And he tends to exaggerate greatly the degrees of
difference. On the other hand, that sense that he was right, that he was on a
mission, that providence moved him, is in many ways accountable for his
remarkable accomplishments.
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