Re: Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

This article was interesting, but unlike the other generals, Clark was
briefly the head of an hardly heroic mission in the Balkans.  Comparison
between the efforts of McClellan or MacArthur seems to be a bit
exaggerated.
 --

Michael Perelman


My father, who served in the China/Burma/India theater during World War
II ( the infamous 490th Bomb Squadron known as the Burma Bridge
busters--94 missions in B-25s against the Japanese fascists; low-level
bombing so low they didn't carry parachutes) had an abiding hatred of
MacArthur. His own hatred came from MacArthur having appropriated
several air transports to take out his personal valuables during the
fall of the Philippines--transports that could have been used to save
some who wound up on the Batan death march. He also ordered air strikes
against gold mines owned by his family that had been played out in order
to collect reparations for bomb damages.

But in addition to being a malignant narcissist, megalomaniac,
manipulator, pathological liar and hypocrite, Mac Arthur had a direct
role in the attempted overthrow of FDR in 1934 and attempts to set up a
fascist state by members of the "Committee For a Sound Dollar" and the
"American Liberty League" who attempted to recruit Maj. Gen Smedley D.
Butler (three times awarded Medal of Honor, twice given as the first
time in 1905 the Medal of Honor was not presented as Butler was
ineligible as the medal was not awarded to officers until 1914) who was
revered by veterans (they wanted Butler to organize an army of 500,000
veterans from the 1932 "bonus marches" to act as shock troops to take
the white house and hold it) as those same veterans absolutely hated
MacArthur for his role in opening fire against the bonus marchers
(against the direct orders of Herbert Hoover). See History Channel film
"The Plot to Overthrow FDR" or Jules Archer's "The Plot to Seize the
White House". Of course MacArthur and his fellow conspirators (J.P.
Morgan, John Davis, Al Smith, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker,
Irenee Du Pont et al) were never tried; the plot was exposed by General
Butler himself.

Jim C.