Interestingly (at least to me) MacArthur did worse,

He most certainly did, and I’ve often wondered why Roosevelt didn’t sack him upon his ignominious arrival in Australia. Or why Truman didn’t do the same after his insubordinate public comments regarding Korea and China.

I guess his saving grace was his brief flashes of genius and soaring rhetoric. He also had a habit of making promises and keeping them.

But he was hell to work with and tended to be anywhere there was a camera. But for all that, he promised to return to the Philippines, and did just that.

He also managed the post war reconstruction of Japan and was largely responsible for drafting Japan’s post war constitution- a constitution that is still largely in effect.

A complex man indeed.

For all of his poppycock strutting, the name “MacArthur” is still respected in Japan and the Philippines…..though with the passage of time, all things, just as old soldiers, tend to fade away.

Can you tell I’m in a reflective mood today as the ghosts of Munich rattle around the halls of Washington?