contents - Description: Description: Description: Description ...

Seventh Fleet into the Strait of Formosa to prevent any type of invasion. This freed the Red
China army to enter the Korean War. The Chinese, with the excuse that they were protecting the
security of their country, stormed across the border on November 26, 1950, and stopped the UN
army at the Yalu River. Chiang then offered to send an advance force of 33,000 troops into
North Korea, but the State Department refused. They were a member of the UN, yet the United
States would not let them fight.
The Korean War, Korean Conflict, or Police Action, as it is sometimes called, developed into
a stalemate of broken cease-fire agreements, and MacArthur made plans for a massive retaliation
against China. He wanted to bomb the ammunition and fuel dumps, the supply bases, and
communication lines to China (bridges across the Yalu River), and to post a blockade around the
Chinese coast. However, on December 5, 1950, Truman and other Administration officials
decided that this sort of action would bring Russia into the conflict, and possibly initiate World
War III. MacArthur was ordered not to proceed with any of his plans. The Joint Chiefs of Staff
said: “We felt the action urged by Gen. MacArthur would hazard this safety (of the U.S.) without
promising any certain proportionate gain.” A letter written to a Congressman, by MacArthur,
was read on the floor of the House, giving them the full story of how much the Red Chinese were
involved. Still, nothing was done. Gen. Lin Piao, the Red Chinese commander, said later: “I
would never have made the attack and risked my men and military reputation if I had not been
assured that Washington would restrain General MacArthur from taking adequate retaliatory
measures against my lines of supply and communication.”
With MacArthur insisting that there was no substitute for victory and that the war against
Communism would be either won or lost in Korea, he was relieved of his command, on April 11,
1951, by Gen. Matthew B. Ridgeway, a member of the CFR.
Air Force Commander, Gen. George Stratemeyer said: “We had sufficient air bombardment,
fighters, reconnaissance so that I could have taken out all those supplies, those airdromes on the
other side of the Yalu; I could have bombed the devils between there and Mukden, stopped the
railroad operating and the people of China that were fighting could not have been supplied ... But
we weren’t permitted to do it. As a result, a lot of American blood was spilled over there in
Korea.”
Gen. Stratemeyer testified before the Congress: “You get in war to win it. You do not get in
war to stand still and lose it and we were required to lose it. We were not permitted to win.” Gen.
Matt Clark told them: “I was not allowed to bomb the numerous bridges across the Yalu River
over which the enemy constantly poured his trucks, and his munitions, and his killers.”
MacArthur would later write:
“I was ... worried by a series of directives from Washington which were greatly
decreasing the potential of my air force. First I was forbidden ‘hot’ pursuit of enemy
planes that attacked our own. Manchuria and Siberia were sanctuaries of inviolate
protection for all enemy forces and for all enemy purposes, no matter what depredations
or assaults might come from there. Then I was denied the right to bomb the hydroelectric
plants along the Yalu River. This order was broadened to include every plant in North
Korea which was capable of furnishing electric power to Manchuria and Siberia ... Most
incomprehensible of all was the refusal to let me bomb the important supply center at
Racin, which was not in Manchuria or Siberia, but many miles from the border …
(where) the Soviet Union forwarded supplies from Vladivostok for the North Korean
Army. I felt that step-by-step my weapons were being taken away from me...”