2 Responses to “Remember the bone spurs”

• #1

  Nullius in Verba

  May 30, 2020 at 2:01 pm

  Pedantically, fascism fetishizes strength, to the point of abhorring any indication of weakness. Trump certainly does that.

  But, um, reducing MacArthur and Patton to insubordinate, violent assholes who were busted from command is kinda low.

  Patton was a great general, and his ultimate removal from command had more to do with media gaffes than anything to do with being an insubordinate, violent asshole. The slapping incident was definitely him being a violent asshole, though.

  As for MacArthur, I’ll quote wiki on the subject of his relief from command:

  Truman and Acheson agreed that MacArthur was insubordinate, but the Joint Chiefs avoided any suggestion of this. Insubordination was a military offense, and MacArthur could have requested a public court martial similar to that of Billy Mitchell. The outcome of such a trial was uncertain, and it might well have found him not guilty and ordered his reinstatement. The Joint Chiefs agreed that there was “little evidence that General MacArthur had ever failed to carry out a direct order of the Joint Chiefs, or acted in opposition to an order”. “In point of fact”, Bradley insisted, “MacArthur had stretched but not legally violated any JCS directives. He had violated the President’s 6 December directive [not to make public statements on policy matters], relayed to him by the JCS, but this did not constitute violation of a JCS order.” Truman ordered MacArthur’s relief by Ridgway, and the order went out on 10 April with Bradley’s signature.

  In a 3 December 1973 article in Time magazine, Truman was quoted as saying in the early 1960s:

  “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

  The relief of the famous general by the unpopular politician for communicating with Congress led to a constitutional crisis, and a storm of public controversy. Polls showed that the majority of the public disapproved of the decision to relieve MacArthur. By February 1952, almost nine months later, Truman’s approval rating had fallen to 22 percent.

  So you can bet that there is a not-insignificant number of people who are decidedly not fascists who have positive views regarding both generals.
• #2

  Acolyte of Sagan

  May 31, 2020 at 10:13 am

  Get tough and fight (and arrest the bad ones).

  By ‘bad ones’ one assumes he meant ‘survivors’.