President Truman vs. General MacArthur: Allies as Liabilities

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Jim

The Korean conflict between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur has been framed in history by the partisans of Truman as a case of the commander-in-chief replacing an insubordinate general.  However, the full context is not only more relevant, but also applicable to today.

Consistent with his second-hand nature, Truman was both dependent upon allies and deferential to them.

As several British officials were actually Soviet agents, this led to the Chinese communists knowing the limits Truman had put upon MacArthur’s scope of actions and specific battle plans that MacArthur had reported to Washington; in fact, the Chinese communists have stated that they would not have sent troops into North Korea if they had not known about Truman’s straightjacketing MacArthur from taking effective actions against the enemy forces.

MacArthur’s initiatives for victory were blunted by actual ally objections, and worries about not upsetting allied sensibilities.

Meanwhile, recommendations by MacArthur to use Chinese nationalists as allies were blocked as an unacceptable risk; they could have been used to contribute forces in battle or act as a decoy to hold Chinese communist reserves out of Korea.  In fact, as ordered by the Truman Administration, the US Navy protected the flank of the Chicoms by preventing Nationalists from attacking the mainland across the straight.

Our use of allies in the War on Terror, Afghanistan, and Iraq has been a subject of much public comment and debate.  We find that not all allies are equal and some can be a serious detriment to our efforts.  Further, as in Korea, our use of allies has created conflicts between American interests and allied constraints.  Like during the Truman Administration, the Obama Administration has pursued an invalid hierarchy: first appease our enemies, then appease our allies, and finally consider American interests.

This is the third in a series of six posts on the lessons from the Truman-MacArthur conflict.

1) Voting for Leaders

2) The Problem of Inferior Leaders

3) Allies as Liabilities

4) Unprincipled Policies Lead to Serial SNAFUs

5) An Administration Not on the Same Page

6) Limited War and Defeat

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Posted in Foreign Policy, History, President | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Even Lawyers Can’t Keep Track of Our Arbitrary Laws

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Jim

In a recent gaffe, Vice President Biden has done a great service to our country by demonstrating that our current laws are so arbitrary that not even he knows what is legal and what is not.  In context, he is a lawyer, former legislator, and currently a leader in the executive branch with its regulatory and enforcement responsibility.  What is the average citizen to do when even Biden does not know the law?

In his push to promote a new law and more regulations related to gun control, VP Biden has been promoting shotguns for home defense as if he was a salesman living off his commission.  In a personal anecdote about how wonderful shotguns are, he told his wife to ward off scary noises at night by going onto the balcony of their home and shooting a couple shotgun blasts into the air.  Unfortunately for our VP, that is against the law according officials in Biden’s home state.

Seriously, how are you and I supposed to know that something is illegal if even VP Biden does not know?

In response, I have a modest proposal.  Our legislators should be tested on the minutia of federal laws and regulations. Any laws/regulations that fail to be verified as known in detail by a majority of both houses of Congress should be repealed as too arbitrary to be enforced against average citizens.

To be fair to the average Joe, our legislators should not know the topic of the test nor be able to study before the exam nor be able to farm out this work to staff.

When former Speaker Pelosi would not let us know what is in a law until after it has been voted on, shouldn’t we check to see if our legislators found out after the law was passed?

Unfortunately, arbitrary law actually brings about the rule of men, of influence peddling, of political prisoners, and of the politics of pull; thus, our contempt for law grows.

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Extra Point: Joe Biden flashback…

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President Truman vs. General MacArthur: The Problem of Inferior Leaders

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Jim

The Korean conflict between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur has been framed in history by the partisans of Truman as a case of the commander-in-chief replacing an insubordinate general.  However, the full context is not only more relevant, but also applicable to today.

While MacArthur was not a faultless individual, he was a superior leader, strategist, and an active executive.

After listening to many complementary biographers of Truman, I conclude that he was an unaccomplished, inferior man, who was smaller than the responsibility that he held; while my judgment may soften with reading a definitive Truman biography, I doubt it as the more I learn of him the smaller he becomes.  As an example of Truman’s unfitness see his personal policy related to his undue deference to military commanders.

Truman’s two favorite military generals in history were in the end losers:  Hannibal of Carthage and confederate Robert E. Lee.  Instead of crediting their defeats to the political and military leadership of Scipio and Abraham Lincoln, Truman blamed the interference of politicians back home for causing superior generals to lose; for example: the politicians in Carthage recalled Hannibal from Italy to defend the homeland from Scipio’s attacks.  Truman was not going to be one of those interfering politicians and would instead give the generals free reign to do their jobs.  For an examination of this point of Truman’s psyche, see Michael Perlman’s 2009 lecture at the Pritzker Military Library.

In this light, contrast Truman’s failure to achieve victory in Korea with Lincoln’s pushing and replacing of generals until he could find one that would wage war against the South (see Sheridan’s Valley campaign, which put Virginia’s breadbasket to the torch, and Sherman’s famed March to the Sea with its Sherman bowties made from the South’s rail lines ).

Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs demonstrated ponderous indecisiveness and inaction at the cost of our soldiers’ lives.  More on that in a future post in this series.

In MacArthur, Truman selected the wrong man to be commander in Korea based upon Truman’s eventual strategic objective, which was to lead a stalemate that would kill American soldiers without a substantial investment of America resources.  MacArthur’s leadership, values, and skills were not compatible with that mission.

So that this aspect of the conflict related to the disparity in the quality of leadership will not be misconstrued as a past problem or a potential future problem only, see the recent firing of General Stanley McChrystal by the Obama Administration in 2010 over comments reported in Rolling Stone that were derogatory related to individuals in the civilian leadership.

Extra Point: For a detailed examination of the critical aspects of the leadership and strategies of Scipio and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, see John David Lewis’ book Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History.

This is the second in a series of six posts on the lessons from the Truman-MacArthur conflict.

1) Voting for Leaders

2) The Problem of Inferior Leaders

3) Allies as Liabilities

4) Unprincipled Policies Lead to Serial SNAFUs

5) An Administration Not on the Same Page

6) Limited War and Defeat

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Posted in Foreign Policy, History, President, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

IRS’ 401k Early Withdrawal Penalties vs. Americans in Reality

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Jim

I have been seeing a number of media reports about a HelloWallet analysis related to individuals withdrawing funds early from 401k and defined contribution pension plans.  The theme in this reporting is that these programs have failed as vehicles for retirement savings, because withdrawals are being used to pay living expenses.  There are a few relevant points to consider in this reporting.

First, there is currently a drive by some legislators to eliminate individual tax reductions for retirement savings as a way to increase tax revenue.

Second, the alternative for retirement savings championed by these legislators is collectivist defined benefit pensions, which are currently grossly underfunded because of investment losses, prospects for lower investment returns in the future, and the failure to collect initial contributions equal to promised benefits.

Third, our current level of high taxes and tax avoidance schemes nudge individuals into politically favored savings (retirement, health care, and education) to the detriment of general purpose savings required to sustain normal living.  In doing so, our legislators have increased financial risk for individuals.

What are the relevant principles that should be applied to the issue?

  1. Individuals should be in control of, without nudging by government, their own savings as it is their property; and
  2. Proper taxes are exclusively for the purpose of raising revenue to pay for legitimate government functions (police, military, courts).

To encourage individual savings, the Congress needs to eliminate the tax “incentive” schemes that it has previously created and instead lower the tax rate.  Although not discussed, there is another issue that must be mentioned; Congress must eliminate regulations that are lowering productivity (income) and increasing expenses.

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President Truman vs. General MacArthur: Six Lessons for Today

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Jim

The Korean conflict between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur has been framed in history by the partisans of Truman as a case of the commander-in-chief replacing an insubordinate general.  However, the full context is not only more relevant, but also applicable to today.

When asked how he would get out of an impossible military situation, Napoleon reportedly said that he was a good general because he would not have gotten into such an impossible situation.  The sacking of MacArthur by Truman is one of those situations that developed over time and could have been avoided with better leadership from titular superiors.

Beyond the two principles, grave errors were committed by Secretary of State Dean Acheson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Omar Bradley.  However, President Harry “The Buck Stops Here” Truman led this cluster f, which could more accurately be called a SNAFU.

Ultimately, the blame lies with the American electorate as they selected a dying man to be president in 1944, and an inferior one to remain president in 1948.

In examining such conflicts, the media too often simplifies and personifies it as an issue of did the President win or lose with partisans for or against a President following their assigned role in lockstep.  The antecedent causes are ignored, which if properly managed would have prevented or mitigated the crisis.  Meanwhile, the essential roles played by subordinate players in developing and implementing policy is ignored as if a President could decide and things would automatically happen according to that decision; consequently, the importance of managerial skill is given insufficient priority.

Just as Napoleon claimed that his success as a general came from avoiding impossible situations, voters need to recognize our own role in creating the problems that our country currently faces.  In the last election, we choose to return all the same individuals to office that failed to solve our country’s fiscal problems, and so far they still are failing to do so.  That was a predictable consequence, so we as voters should not be surprised that our unsustainable fiscal conflicts persist.

Truman’s mismanagement precipitated his conflict with MacArthur over policy in Korea; whereas FDR was able to manage MacArthur during WWII, Truman failed to do so.  Just as Truman’s failure built over time, we voters are failing in managing our elected leaders as we have rewarded their failure to the danger of our country.  Unlike Truman, we voters could chose to take responsibility for our mistakes, instead of blaming our subordinates, and examine and correct our erroneous premises that caused our current “impossible” situation with the public debt and unfunded liabilities.  We are the boss, and the buck stops with us.

This is the first is a series of six posts on the lessons from the Truman-MacArthur conflict.

2) The Problem of Inferior Leaders

3) Allies as Liabilities

4) Unprincipled Policies Lead to Serial SNAFUs

5) An Administration Not on the Same Page

6) Limited War and Defeat

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Posted in History, President | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments