What if Douglas MacArthur was immortal and was in charge of Iraq?
 

He was a little crazy and a bit of an egotistical bastard, but he was a damn good general and he did a great job in the occupation of japan in the late 40s.

Korea Douglas MacArthur.

Truman: Can we win in Korea?
MacArthur: If we nuke the bridges to prevent the Chinese from coming in
Truman: OK we'll do Korea, but we're not using nukes

Later on. . .

Truman: You told me we could win in Korea
MacArthur: Yeah, but you didn't do it my way
Truman: You're fired!

every dead body that is not exterminated becomes ONE OF THEM.

IT GETS UP AND KILLS.

the people it kills, get up and KILL!

nonsense. simply nonsense. there is no such thing as a damn good general.

Isn't a man who values the life of his men and uses the tactics that would squander the least lives a good military leader?

He had a big feud with military command in WW1 because of their poor tactics that just squandered soldier's lives.

this thread isn't about zombies??? :(




PS: I think Rommel would have been more skilled in the desert. MacArthur was an island hopper.

True.

But MacArthur got the Japanese nation to disassociate their emperor with the divine.

He'd probably havet old Bush he wouldn't command an illegal war. How many children has Bush murdered in Iraq? You don't care. You're evil!

he had big feuds all through out his career, that last one being because he insisted on being given the authority to use atomic weapons... sounds like the just like the guy I want in charge of the most destructive military force in the world...

Atomic weapons didn't exist in WW1

true

yeah, but that dude was around a little bit longer, in fact decades longer, and he probably would have been a fucking general in Vietnam if they hadn't made him retire because he was insane.

I don't know, but zombies are some heavy shit.

Not very successfully, the Imperial family in Japan are still revered as divine by a significant percentage of the population

The Macarthur we are talking about, this is the same "good" general who set up the communist witch hunt in the 1950's that ruined so many peoples lives on the basis of rumour and innuendo?

And the person to sort out Iraq would have been Maggie Thatcher

This thread has become gruesomely full of misinformation

MacArthur wasn't a communist witch hunter, you are thinking about McCarthy.

Also, he died in 1964, before Vietnam was escalated to a conflict, preventing him from being able to be a general during Vietnam. Also, he would have been in his late 80s.

Thats why I asked and didnt state it as a fact, the question mark was a bit of a giveaway

And I still think Maggie was the best man for the job in Iraq

He would try to understand the Iraqis, which is more than I can say for the neocon crew.

before Vietnam escalated into a conflict?

The conflict started in 1945, and the US was involved from the very beginning as the OSS, in fact, Ho Chi Minh was named Agent 19 of the OSS in 1946..... By 1954 when the French failed, US military advisors were sent in to boost the puppet Diem regime, and even Kennedy personally admitted to US military deaths in combat in Vietnam during 1961-1963. US Generals were heavily involved both in the advisorary level and in combat since the mid 1950s, and so, perhaps, yes, considering the conflict has US involvement since 1945, MacArthur could have and probably did have involvement in US military action in Vietnam (the country, not the specific US "war" supposedly between 1965-1974)

...."President Kennedy first began to have doubts about our military effort in Vietnam in 1961 when both General Douglas MacArthur and General Charles de Gaulle warned him that the Asian mainland was no place to be fighting a non-nuclear land war. There was no end to Asian manpower, MacArthur told the President, and even if we poured a million American infantry soldiers into that continent, we would still find ourselves outnumbered on every side. De Gaulle said the same thing in Paris that spring, pointing out that the French had shown us the hopelessness of trying to fight in that country."

There was a US presence, and there were deaths, granted, but I don't see how MacArthur being involved prior to it escalating would have caused anything bad to happen.

If anything, MacArthur's advisement about Korea and Vietnam should have probably been listened to. Truman would have decided not to be involved in Korea, and Kennedy could have prevented the Vietnam "police action."

Saying "we can win, but only if we use nuclear weapons" is not the same as saying "mr. president, let's nuke the fuck out of 'em!"

And MacArthur was right. We didn't use nuclear weapons and we lost. MacArthur knew the score. He also knew that the military decision to use a nuclear weapon was in the hands of the president. He let Truman and Kennedy make the moral choice. Fully commit or be passive.

They chose the 3rd option. Going to war "the moral" way, which wasted between 2.5-3.5 million lives in Korea, and 2.5-5 million lives in Vietnam, and people are still dying today from the Vietnamese war.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused about 150,000 deaths with people still dying today. All signs were pointing to a full scale invasion of japan causing 10 fold that amount.

What would have happened if Truman had gone to war and decided to order MacArthur to nuke the bridges? Who knows. Could have started World War III.

But strategically, a general's duty is to win war quickly with minimum casualties all around. Starting wars or deciding whether to use the bomb is not part of his duties.


Personally, I'm against war, but I think MacArthur gets a bad rap. He was certainly a character, but he wasn't a JACK D. RIPPER sort of guy.