Thank goodness Truman, Obama stood their ground

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas

Thursday, June 24, 2010 | 2:02 a.m.

In a Wednesday letter to the editor, Sam Pizzo defended Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the general’s conflict with the president on the Afghanistan war policy. Pizzo refers to the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur by President Harry Truman during the Korean War and asks, “Why do we have generals if we are not going to listen to them?”

First, the military of the United States is controlled by a civilian president. We do not want a junta running our government. Second, the words and actions of MacArthur in Korea threatened a land war with China and a possible global nuclear war.

The use of nuclear weapons was on the table for Korea, but the decision to use them was that of the president only. Truman fired MacArthur and the president’s tempered response in Korea eventually resulted in a truce that ended the military conflict. Had Truman given in to MacArthur’s views, Korea might have escalated to a war we could not win.

McChrystal has made statements in the past as if he were in charge of the Afghanistan war policy, and he has been critical of the White House. The president has called in McChrystal before to tell him to button his lip with no apparent effect. I believe Obama was correct for “accepting the general’s resignation” to maintain the principle of civilian control of the military.