Douglas MacArthur Quotes

The Kuomintang nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek tried to stay in power in China, but their corruption and incompetency at government lost them the support of most of the Chinese. The Chinese communists took over the government. The Nationalists then invaded the offshore island of Taiwan but claimed to be the rightful government of all of China. For many years they controlled the Chinese seat in the UN and they refused to recognize the fact that they had failed to gain the loyalty of the Chinese people.

In World War II, all the Chinese political organizations united to fight the Japanese invaders. The Communists however did most of the fighting and took the heaviest casualties. He proposed turning on their weakened allies and that was accepted by Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader. They attacked the Communists under Mao and Cho En Lai and forced them to flee across the country in the “Long March”. The Nationalists and their warlords were hated by the majority of the Chinese, especially the peasants who provided help and support to the Communists while they made their escape. They then regrouped and attacked the Nationalists in the Chinese Revolution and this time Chiang Kai-shek, Bai Chongxi and the other Chinese Leaders fled. With few people to help them, they had to flee to Taiwan, and the Communists took over China. Some historians believe that it was Chiang Kai-shek’s strategy all along to hold his soldiers back and let the Communists bear the casualties with the intention of turning on then when the Japanese were expelled. Others claim that Chiang’s relatively unaggressive military action against the Japanese reflected his typical conservatism and avoidance of risk and there was no intention to attack the Communists after the war and the alliance was made in good faith. Note that the leading Muslims in China (where they are a significant minority) were allied with the Chinese Christians against the Communists. Bai Chongxi had a special Muslim newspaper which regularly published religious quoted from the Koran and the Hadith purporting to support and justify Chiang Kai-shek, a Christian, as the rightful leader of China. This was another example of Islam being hijacked for a narrow political purpose. Also, note his use of the word “bandits”. This is a huge insult in the Chinese language culture. So of course the Nationalists used it to refer to the Communists—See {613286} .

He was a virulent anti communist and an opponent and foe of Chiang Kai-shek who he regarded as too moderate.

In 1921 an Paul E. De Mott, an American Quaker famine relief worker in Germany was arrested as a "Bolshevik" and murdered without trial. American correspondents heard about the crime and asked for a statement from the chief American diplomat in Germany.

It was this perverted logic that led the Nationalists to adopt a policy of killing lower class and poor workers. Though there were communists in Spain at the time, most of the peasants and the abject poor had little or no political philosophy or education. More sophisticated Nationalist apologists observed that the ultra poor were easily enlisted into left-wing causes like communism, so their elimination before the fact was a preventive technique.

The Communists under Mao won the Civil War easily as the Nationalists were not only corrupt and very unpopular, but they were not very interested in the welfare of the Chinese peasants. Further Chiang was a ruthless dictator. At the time there was great pressure for America to support any faction that was anti Communist regardless of how bad they were themselves. Davies and others who thought that we should have communications with the Communists who would soon control China, were viciously attacked by Senator McCarthy who accused Davies of “loosing China” and the Senator and some other Americans thought that the Nationalists could win the Civil War. We now know that they never had a chance, but at the time they did a very good job of promoting their cause and capability in the United States and especially in Washington. None the less, in the Red Scare, Davies was fired, only to thereafter be awarded the highest civilian award in the nation in recognition of his great and patriotic work.

The president was surprised by the rapid spread and expansion of the anti-war movement at the time was convinced that the communists were organizing the effort. After all the investigations and histories, it was an extremely fast growing movement—perhaps the first of the digital political movements as e-mail was one of the tools used in the universities where e-mail was then coming into use.

For years the Nationalist Military under Chiang Kai-shek and other Generals like Ma Hongkui had murdered suspected communist politicians, and in the Civil War with the communists rarely took any prisoners. The Communists in turn, “tried” and executed landlords and other major capitalists who had previously in their view treated the peasants badly and were responsible for much starvation. Neither side had any scruples about ignoring human rights and committing war crimes.

Cuba was not Communist under Castro in the Russian style of Communism. However, Castro operated Cuba with many of the key Marxist & Leninist Communist Principles {636672} (some of which the Russians were hypocritical about). Cuba was very much a Marxist, Socialistic State with few of the democratic reforms that characterized European Socialism. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian Communist aid propped up the Cuban economy, and that was another motivation for Castro not to criticize Russian Communism so he often appeared to be in agreement with Russian Communism even when he wasn't.

When Nixon and Kissinger went to China in the midst of the cold war, there are many American right-wingers who objected and thought that it was a betrayal of America’s fundamental principles At the same time, the extreme left wing, hard line Communists objected for the exact same reasons to China allowing the visit. This quotation is an excellent example of the latter.

During the Cold War and afterwards many Americans attributed the problems we were having with the Soviet Union emenated from the fact that they were Communists, and our focus was anti-communism. Kennen, however argued that it was not Communism that was the cause of the Aggression of the Soviet Union. It was an extension of the Russian Culture. After the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communism was rejected by the Russians, we still had a great deal of Russian aggression and Foreign Policy problems with Russia. Kennan was right. It was the Russian culture, history, values and traditions that were the primary cause of most of the problems with Russia.