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(The KOREAN WAR -- continued)
The KOREAN WAR (7 of 8)
In the United States 50 percent of those surveyed believed that World War III was imminent. In the Mediterranean, the U.S. Sixth Fleet had put to sea. A total embargo had been put on trade with China and China's assets in the U.S. frozen. Congress had loosened its purse strings and voted more money for defense. An economic boom was beginning in the U.S. and Japan. The U.S. was sending more troops to Europe, along with Dwight Eisenhower, who had been appointed Supreme Commander of NATO.
Republicans were criticizing the Democrats and President Truman. Among the Republicans was a mix of isolationism and revulsion for communism. The party's senior member, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, now seventy-six, claimed that it would be best for the nation to withdraw to Fortress America and become the "Gibraltar of Western Civilization."
In the Congressional elections of 1950 the Republicans campaigned against inflation and Truman having lost China. They were supporting Truman's war efforts but criticizing him for having made numerous mistakes. In November, the Republicans gained eight seats in the Senate and fifty-two seats in the House of Representatives, leaving the Democrats with only a two-seat advantage in the Senate and an advantage of thirty-six seats in the House of Representatives -- a drop from the gains the Democrats had made in 1948. Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, who had been charging that Americans were dying in Korea because of spies in the State Department, won his election. The Senator who had been leading the fight against hysteria and wild charges, Millard Tydings of Maryland, lost his re-election bid. A Republican from Illinois, Everett Dirkson, who had called the Marshall Plan "Operation Rathole," won a Senate Seat. Congressman Richard Nixon, running for a California Senate seat, defeated his incumbent opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Cold War liberal who had supported Truman against Henry Wallace. During the campaign, Douglas was portrayed as a Communist sympathizer.
Senator Robert Taft of Ohio won his re-election by a wide margin, and conservatives were looking forward to running him for President in 1952. Taft began the new session of Congress in January, 1951, by criticizing President Truman for sending troops to Korea without the approval of Congress. The Communists in Korea, he declared, can be stopped by air and navel forces instead of ground forces. Taft wanted to take the Republican Party away from Eastern establishment internationalists -- men like Dewey. He declared against U.S. troops fighting in Europe. The NATO alliance, he said, was a mistake. And Russia, he said, should either be kicked out of the UN or the UN should be dissolved and reorganized without Russia.
From his command post in Tokyo, MacArthur was opposed to a negotiated settlement. MacArthur wanted to bring Chiang's Kai-shek's troops to Korea from Taiwan, to bomb Chinese cities and use atomic bombs if necessary. MacArthur declared that there was "no substitute for victory." Many in the United States agreed with him. The concept of limited war was winning few adherents. MacArthur's position was easier to understand. Many people saw the U.S. not as limiting its goal to defending South Korea but as trying to fight with one arm tied behind its back. And demoralized American troops were writing home and wondering what they were fighting for.
Across a front from the west to east coasts the Chinese in January pushed more than fifty miles south of Seoul. Then in February the Communist advance collapsed. The new commander of UN forces in Korea was General Matthew Ridgway, a bright, energetic and determined man. He talked his troops into standing their ground and attacking. He began employing the UN's superior firepower, using heavy artillery ten miles from the Chinese and then lighter weapons closer in, while aircraft swooped down on the Chinese, firing rockets and dropping napalm.
In Tokyo, Ridgway's commander, MacArthur, still favored some sort of complete victory -- beyond saving South Korea. MacArthur wanted to bomb bases in China. He would not refrain from making public statements about the war, and, on April 10, Truman fired him for insubordination.
Two days later, Senator Taft attacked what he called Truman's "appeasement of the Chinese." This appeasement, he said, "makes a larger war more likely in the future." Taft spoke in favor of bombing China and helping Chiang Kai-shek's forces invade the mainland.
MacArthur got a hero's welcome in the United States, and telegrams poured into Congress demanding Truman's impeachment. MacArthur made an emotional farewell address to Congress, which the public liked and Truman, in private, denounced. Polls described Truman's popularity as having dropped to the mid-thirties in percentage, and there his popularity would stay for the remainder of his term in office.
Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.