Liliputin-4901

Stick to your guns, but not to your loose cannons like General MacArthur ... "
Harry S. Truman

Liliputins. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2021/11/24/7101

To stick to your guns means to continue to have your beliefs or continue with a plan of action, even if other people disagree with you. The phrase alludes to a soldier remaining and firing their gun(s) at an enemy, even when the situation might be dangerous or hopeless.

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A loose cannon is someone who behaves in an uncontrolled or unexpected way and is likely to cause problems for other people. The term is used to describe someone whose behavior is unpredictable and could cause problems. It is a slang term that refers to someone who is uncontrolled and therefore poses danger.

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Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly as the 34th vice president in 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt's death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress. Truman was raised in Independence, Missouri, and during World War I fought in France as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning home, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, and was elected as a judge of Jackson County in 1922. Truman was elected to the United States Senate from Missouri in 1934. Between 1940 and 1944, he gained national prominence as chairman of the Truman Committee, which was aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency in wartime contracts.

Truman was elected vice president in the 1944 presidential election and assumed the presidency upon Roosevelt's death. It was only when Truman assumed the presidency that he was informed about the ongoing Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. Truman authorized the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of the world war. Truman's administration engaged in an internationalist foreign policy by working closely with Britain. Truman staunchly denounced isolationism. He energized the New Deal coalition during the 1948 presidential election, despite a divided Democratic Party, and won a surprise victory against Republican Party nominee Thomas E. Dewey that secured his own presidential term.

Truman presided over the onset of the Cold War in 1947. He oversaw the Berlin Airlift and Marshall Plan in 1948. With the involvement of the US in the Korean War of 1950–1953, South Korea repelled the invasion by North Korea. Domestically, the postwar economic challenges such as strikes and inflation created a mixed reaction over the effectiveness of his administration. In 1948, he proposed Congress pass comprehensive civil rights legislation. Congress refused, so Truman issued Executive Order 9980 and Executive Order 9981, which prohibited discrimination in federal agencies and desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces.

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Relief of Douglas MacArthur

On 11 April 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then commander of United Nations Command forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil–military relations.

MacArthur led the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, and after the war was in charge of the occupation of Japan. In the latter role, MacArthur was able to accumulate considerable power over the civil administration of Japan. Eventually, he gained a level of political experience that was unprecedented and not to be repeated by anyone else actively serving as a flag officer in the U.S. military.

When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, starting the Korean War, MacArthur was designated commander of the United Nations forces defending South Korea. He conceived and executed the amphibious assault at Inchon on 15 September 1950, but when he followed up his victory with a full-scale invasion of North Korea on Truman's orders, China inflicted a series of defeats, compelling him to withdraw from North Korea. By April 1951, the military situation had stabilized, but MacArthur continued to publicly criticize his superiors and attempt to escalate the conflict, leading Truman to relieve MacArthur of his commands. The Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate held a joint inquiry into the military situation and the circumstances surrounding MacArthur's relief and concluded that "the removal of General MacArthur was within the constitutional powers of the President, but the circumstances were a shock to national pride".

An apolitical military was an American tradition. The principle of civilian control of the military was also ingrained. Civilian control was an issue considering the constitutional division of powers between the president as commander-in-chief, and Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and declare war. This was also an era when the rising complexity of military technology led to the creation of a professional military and American forces were employed overseas in large numbers. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the president's role as preeminent.

Legacy
The relief of MacArthur cast a long shadow over American civil-military relations. When Lyndon Johnson met with General William Westmoreland in Honolulu in 1966, he told him: "General, I have a lot riding on you. I hope you don't pull a MacArthur on me." For his part, Westmoreland and his senior colleagues were eager to avoid any hint of dissent or challenge to presidential authority. This came at a high price. In his 1998 book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, then-Lieutenant Colonel H. R. McMaster argued that the Joint Chiefs failed in their duty to provide the President, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara or Congress with frank and fearless professional advice. This book was an influential one; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General Hugh Shelton, gave copies to every four-star officer in the military.

On the one hand, the relief of MacArthur established a precedent that generals and admirals could be fired for any public or private disagreement with government policy. In 1977, Major General John K. Singlaub publicly criticized proposed cuts in the size of American forces in South Korea, and was summarily relieved by President Jimmy Carter for making statements "inconsistent with announced national security policy". During the Gulf War in 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney relieved the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Michael Dugan, for showing "poor judgment at a very sensitive time" in making a series of statements to the media during a visit to Saudi Arabia. In 2010, President Barack Obama fired General Stanley A. McChrystal after McChrystal and his staff made disparaging remarks about senior civilian government officials in an article published in Rolling Stone magazine. This elicited comparisons with MacArthur, as the war in Afghanistan was not going well. On the other hand, Major General James N. Post III was relieved and issued a letter of reprimand in 2015 for discouraging personnel under his command from communicating with the Congress, which he described as "treason".

MacArthur's relief "left a lasting current of popular sentiment that in matters of war and peace, the military really knows best," a philosophy that became known as "MacArthurism". In February 2012, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis published a report entitled "Dereliction of Duty II" in which he criticized senior military commanders for misleading Congress about the war in Afghanistan,[215] especially General David Petraeus, noting that:

A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our country, by the vast majority of our uniformed Service Members, and the population at large: David Petraeus is a real war hero—maybe even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower. But the most important lesson everyone learned: never, ever question General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool. In the years following, the "Legend of Petraeus" spread and expanded, as these things often do, and he was given increasing credit for the success.

During the 1992 presidential election, Bill Clinton used endorsements from the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe, and 21 other retired generals and flag officers to counter doubts about his ability to serve as Commander in Chief. This became a feature of later presidential election campaigns. During the 2004 presidential election, twelve retired generals and admirals endorsed Senator John Kerry, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, and the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, who also appeared in television advertisements defending Kerry against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. During this election campaign, one retired four-star General, Tommy Franks, spoke at the Republican National Convention and another, John Shalikashvili, addressed the Democratic National Convention.

In early 2006, in what was called the "Generals Revolt," six retired generals, Major General John Batiste, Major General Paul D. Eaton, Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Major General John M. Riggs, Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr. and General Anthony C. Zinni, called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, accusing him of "abysmal" military planning and lack of strategic competence. The ethics of a system under which serving generals felt compelled to publicly support policies that they privately believed were potentially ruinous for the country and cost the lives of military personnel, did not escape critical public comment, and was mocked by political satirist Stephen Colbert at a dinner attended by President George W. Bush and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. Rumsfeld resigned in November 2006.
By 2008, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, felt obliged to pen an open letter in which he reminded all servicemen that "The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times.