What? Doug MacArthur has made it onto my top ten losers list? The hero of the Pacific Theater and the mastermind behind the Inchon Landings? Impossible!
Not if you look at the record. Start with his incoherent strategy to defend all of the Philippines that ended in the disastrous surrender at Bataan in April of 1942 (the largest mass surrender of American troops in U.S. history). Follow that with an antagonistic ego that made him frequently unable to work with the Australians defending New Guinea and the ill-advised decision to invade Peleliu (a Japanese stronghold of no immediate strategic value that cost 10,000 U.S. casualties and took two months to secure). Then there is his insistence that Roosevelt invade the Philippines—despite the fact the archipelago had no real strategic value—so he could keep his promise to the Pilipino people that he “would return” (as though they cared). The operation at Leyte Gulf took up so much in terms of military assets that Doug may have single-handedly extended the war by months.
But what about Korea, you ask? Wasn’t he the mastermind behind the Inchon landing that broke the back of the North Korean Army and (almost) secured victory on the peninsula? Yes he was, but considering that Inchon was defended by only a small garrison of Korean troops—the rest being locked in battle with U.N. forces around Pusan—meant that only the most incompetent commander would have failed to take it. It’s what happened later, however, where Doug shows his true nature; ignoring intelligence reports that a million Chinese troops were massing along the Korean border ready to invade, he suddenly found himself overrun by Mao’s best and brightest and was forced to retreat well past that pesky 38th parallel. Only his timely firing by Truman (probably Truman’s best decision as President) and General Ridgeway’s (his replacement) tactical sense saved Korea from becoming another Soviet satellite state. Okay, he was a decent military governor in Japan after their surrender and kept the Russians out of Japan, but beyond that, there’s not much that can be said for him, either as a general or a person. Unfair appraisal, you say? Consider that this is the man who had to pull in favors and lobby Congress to get them to award him the Congressional Medal of Honor for his inept defense of the Philippines in 1942. Talk about gall.