War: 1950. Korea

Quotes

“If the incident is permitted to go by without protest, at least from this body, we would have finally terminated for all time the right of Congress to declare war, which is granted to Congress alone by the Constitution of the United States.” (Senator Robert Taft, protesting our UN authorized ‘police action’ in Korea June 28, 1950.)

“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.” (General Lin Piao, commander of the Chinese troops that poured across the Yalu River bridges during the Korean War)

“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.” (General Mark Clark, Congressional testimony after the Korean War)

“…perhaps Communists had wormed their way so deeply into our government on both the working and planning levels that they were able to exercise an inordinate degree of power in shaping the course of America…I could not help wondering and worrying whether we were faced with open enemies across the conference table and hidden enemies who sat with us in our most secret councils.” (General Mark Clark, commenting on the failure of the Korean War)

“My own conviction is that there must have been information to the enemy from high diplomatic authorities that we would not attack his home bases across the Yalu.” (General James Van Fleet, commenting on the failure of the Korean War)

“Such a limitation upon the utilization of available military force to repel and enemy attack has no precedent, either in our own history, or, so far as I know, in the history of the world.” (General Douglas MacArthur, commenting on the failure of the Korean War)

“There is one and only one legitimate goal of United States foreign policy. It is a narrow goal, a nationalistic goal: the preservation of our national independence. Nothing in the Constitution grants that the president shall have the privilege of offering himself as a world leader. He is our executive; he is on our payroll; he is supposed to put our best interests in front of those of other nations. Nothing in the Constitution nor in logic grants to the president of the United States or to Congress the power to influence the political life of other countries, to ‘uplift’ their cultures, to bolster their economies, to feed their people, or even to defend them against their enemies.” (Ezra Taft Benson, America at the Crossroads, August 30, 1969.)

“I realized for the first time that I had actually been denied the use of my full military power to safeguard the lives of my soldiers and the safety of my army. To me, it clearly foreshadowed a future tragic situation in Korea, and left me with a sense of inexpressible shock.” (General Douglas MacArthur, who ordered the Yalu river bridges bombed to halt the Chinese Communists advance was countermanded by Secretary of Defense General George Marshall MacArthur, p. 402.)

“President Wilson had the full departure in mind [of the Founders doctrine of neutrality] when he declared: ‘Everybody’s business is our business.’ Since then we have leaped ahead along the anciently forbidden path.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism.” (President Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign, June 1976.)