A worthwhile read, the great historian David Halberstam on Korea
MACARTHUR'S GRAND DELUSION
"On November 17, MacArthur told Ambassador John Muccio that there were no more than 30,000 Chinese in the country, while the next day Tarkenton placed the number at 48,000. On November 24, the day the major U.N. offensive to go to the Yalu kicked off—instead of sensing how large the Chinese presence was and getting into strong defensive positions—Willoughby placed the minimum number at 40,000, the maximum at 71,000. At the time there were 300,000 Chinese troops waiting patiently for the U.N. forces to come a little deeper into their trap. It was, as Train put it, "the saddest thing I was ever associated with because you could almost see it coming, almost know what happened was going to happen, those young men moving into that awful goddamn trap."
"At first General Eisenhower's 28-year-old son John thought it odd that Gruenther was there for Thanksgiving, because Gruenther had a family of his own. But later he decided that Gruenther was there because Eisenhower was still the man you talked to—he had that special status—when something this serious was going wrong at so high a level. John remembered that a shadow hung over that Thanksgiving Day meal, something that he himself did not entirely understand. Gruenther had told his father that the American forces were simply too exposed and far too vulnerable. When Gruenther left, the general turned to his son and said, "I've never been so pessimistic about this war in my life." John was teaching at West Point at the time, and when he left his father's residence to drive back to the academy, he turned on the car radio and heard a se report about how MacArthur was promising the war would be over by Christmas.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/halberstam200710
It is amazing that the chest thumping war crowd fails to remember even our own modern history as to what happened in the Korean War. Do they expect the Chinese military to sit on their hands if we engage in preemptive strikes on NK? MacArthur thought so too.
Of course one would have to read books to know these risks and our present Commander in Chief finds books oh so taxing.
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