Petra-O IX said:
Oh c'mon Major I don't beleive that, but he may have been refering to the same thing that Ike was concerned about and that was an out of control military complex.
You obviously have never read anything about or by MacArthur. He was VERY conservative (moreso than me, even), and despised FDR and Truman, and the entire New Deal. He thought of Eisenhower as too liberal. When Ike won the 1952 Republican nomination, MacArthur made a comment to friends watching the convention on TV, "He will make a good president, he was the best company clerk I ever had." The mililtary industrial complex statement was pure Eisenhower. Ike and Mac were different breeds. In many ways, MAC was a throwback to ancient times. his Father was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner (as was Mac), with extensive combat time (as had Mac), and Army Chief of Staff (as was Mac. Mac was raised on military bases--his earliest memory was of his father and his men on parade at the post where his father was the commander.
He was first in his class, and his first assignment was fighting Filipino Muslim separatists in the early 1900s. The story goes (scolars argue over this incident) that on his first patrol he was accosted by two Moro guerillas who shot his hat off. He calmly drew his pistol and killed both of them. As the story goes, an old Irish Sergeant handed the Lieutenant his hat and said, "Beggin' the lootenant's pardon, but yer life from here on out is pure velvut." MacArthur was a warrior's warrior, through and through, with significant combat time in WW I as well. He only left the Phillipines in 1942 under direct orders from FDR--he was intending to make a last stand and go down fighting. Vain, egotistical, brave to a fault, and brilliant, he was, as one biographer described him, "America's Caesar." His farewell speech at West Point in his '80s was eloquent and moving.
Eisenhower could not have been more different. He never saw combat, even as a general, but he was exactly what was required for the job of SACEUR--he was a sharp-minded clear thinker who understood bureaucratic politics. He was a successful politician as a civilian because he had been an excellent politician as a military officer.
See MAC's farewell address here:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/MacArthurFarewell.html
Here is the final portion.
"...Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.
Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.
I bid you farewell.
