Presidents And The Generals They Fire

With the firing of General Stanley McChrystal from his position running the war in Afghanistan (and for demonstrating the monumental lapse in judgement of actually saying to a reporter what he actually thinks about the President and the Vice-President and several other members of his cabinet) one has to take note that it is not the first time in history that this kind of thing has occurred. A similar conflict happened between President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 during the Korean War. General MacArthur wanted two things from Truman. The first one was that he wanted the president to give him the green light to fight all the way up the Korean peninsula and actually take the war over the North Korean border and go right into China which would have greatly expanded the war. The second thing was that MacArthur wanted the president to authorize the use of nuclear weapons to settle the conflict. When Truman refused MacArthur took his complaints about the president to the press more than once and then he wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress criticizing Truman. MacArthur even gave Truman the ultimate act of disrespect when he deliberately failed to salute the president when he came off his plane when Truman went to the war front in Korea to discuss matters directly with him. MacArthur got canned. It effectively ended his career as a military man. The same kind of thing occurred between General George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. McClellan was in charge of the Union Army when a disagreement occurred between him and the President about how to prosecute the war. McClellan was relieved of his command. In the weeks and months that followed McClellan referred to Lincoln both as an idiot and also as a well meaning buffoon. He even ran for president against Lincoln in the 1864 election but his candidacy never got any real traction and Lincoln was re-elected.