THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR --- Episode 25

                  THE TRUMAN YEARS : A CONTINUATION 

MacArthur's eagerness to use atomic weapons did not factor into the decision by Truman to fire the popular general. Just the week before, the Joint Chiefs had ordered atomic attacks on Manchurian bases if the Chinese sent in another large contingent of forces. On April 6, Truman approved that order and authorized the transfer of nine atomic weapons from AEC to military custody on Guam and Okinawa. 

Firing MacArthur proved calamitous for Truman, whose approval rating sank below 30 percent. "Seldom has a more unpopular man fired a more popular one," TIME magazine noted. 

Republican leaders in the House and Senate met to discuss impeachment. Senator William Jenner  accused the administration of treason : "this country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union. Our only choice is to impeach President Truman." Jseph McCarthy also wanted to impeach the "son of a bitch" for firing MacArthur and said that Truman must have been drunk at the time on "bourbon and benedictine." He accused Truman of signing "the death warrant of western civilization." 

The public sided with MacArthur. Seven and a half million spectators cheered him at a New York parade. He received a hero's welcome in Washington, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. MacArthur emotionally defended his conduct of the war before a joint session of Congress and bade farewell in a final farewell :

   It has been said . . . that I was a warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes . . . The world has turned over many times since I took the oath . . . at West Point, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed proudly that "old soldiers never die ; they just fade away." And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good bye.

The address was broadcast live on national radio. "We saw a great hunk of God in the flesh and we heard the voice of God," gushed Congressman Dewey Short of Missouri. Truman, however, chided the "damn fool Congressmen crying like a bunch of women" over "nothing but a bunch of bullshit." 

Congressional hearings on MacArthur's firing and Asia policy went on for two months. Congressional Democrats and top military brass effectively rebutted MacArthur's General Bradley rejected MacArthur's proposed war with China as "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." After that, MacArthur's luster faded [like the old soldier???] rapidly. Truman's popularity never recovered. His approval rating sank to a record low of 22 percent. Acheson said that the war "was an incalculable defeat to U.S. foreign policy and destroyed the Truman administration." 

MORE TO COME.