History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (47 page)

Then on September 15, Gen. Douglas MacArthur launched a daring and brilliant amphibious assault upon the west coast port of Inchon, nearly three hundred miles behind the lines of the North Korean People’s Army. The reversal was almost instantaneous. At risk of being cut off and crushed between two fronts, the overextended NKPA retreated northward in a panic.

But it was at this point that Truman chose to change his main objective. At first he simply wanted to reestablish the territorial integrity of South Korea. In just one hundred days, the UN coalition forces accomplished that goal and were holding steady on the prewar dividing line of the thirty-eighth parallel. Instead of standing firm and negotiating a settlement, Truman authorized a counterinvasion, hoping to unify the entire peninsula under one rule, just as the authoritarian Kim Il Sung had aimed to do only months before. Within days, the plan backfired catastrophically.
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Mopping up the remnants of Kim’s broken army, the ROK and the UN coalition sped to the Yalu River and the border of the People’s Republic of China. Minor clashes erupted between South Korean and Chinese regiments, heightening tensions to critical levels. Fearing a UN takeover of the mainland, China attacked—with three hundred thousand soldiers—twice the entire Allied first wave on D-day.

Thus began “Mr. Truman’s War,” a conflict that could have ended after three months but eventually dragged on for more than three years, ending only after Truman’s departure. The eventual death toll: more than 200 Canadian soldiers, 530 British, 49,000 Americans, 103,000 South Koreans, 315,000 North Koreans, and 422,000 Chinese. The losses pale in comparison to the number of civilians who perished—approximately two million (for a perspective, there are fewer than one million individual digits and letters in this book).
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The lowest approval rating for any American president recorded by a major poll was 22 percent, achieved by Harry Truman during the Korean War.

4
. GEORGE W. BUSH

WAR ON TERROR (2001–9)

“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Noble and heartfelt, George W. Bush’s September 20, 2001, address to Congress and the nation focused on Taliban-led Afghanistan, the known center of al-Qaeda operations, and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Less than three weeks later, the United States began bombing operations. By mid-November, ground troops and CIA agents were mopping up the remnants of the Taliban government. The United States had yet to lose an agent or a soldier.
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Yet Bin Laden and most of the main figures in al-Qaeda were not found, and the militant Taliban continued to operate on a limited basis. Rather than retain focus on Afghanistan, Bush looked to expand the war into Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction and was harboring terrorists. The ensuing invasion in March 2003 achieved one stated objective—the capture of Hussein. The Iraqi president was later tried and executed by the provisional government in Baghdad. As for the other goals—finding weapons of mass destruction, proving a link between Hussein and international terrorism, and establishing a stable democratic government in Iraq—none were accomplished in any measurable sense.
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Throughout both wars, Bush proudly referred to himself as “a wartime president.” He might have done better to remember that he had a degree in history because he readily ignored the lessons of the past. He grossly manipulated intelligence to suit his needs (per Eisenhower in the Middle East). His “coalition” was over 90 percent American (as with Truman in Korea). He overestimated a country’s ability to rule itself (like McKinley in Cuba). He vastly underestimated the time, funds, and manpower necessary to complete his major objectives (like Madison in the War of 1812). His worst failure was that he and his advisers engaged in a war that could not be won (like Johnson in Vietnam). “Fighting terror” was an objective with no parameters. His definition of “the enemy” was in continual flux. There was no capital city, no central government, no head of state to force into submission. Consequently, the option of an armistice, peace treaty, or decisive victory was not available.
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During Bush’s tenure, more than 630 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan and 4,200 died in Iraq. Estimates of civilian losses varied widely, but at least 100,000 had perished in Iraq alone. The financial cost of hunting Bin Laden and “nation building” in Iraq surpassed one trillion dollars, and the eventual cost, including care to disabled veterans and replacement of military equipment, will reach two to three trillion.
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The highest approval rating for any American president recorded by a major poll was 90 percent, achieved by George W. Bush a week after September 11, 2001. The week before, his ratings were 51 percent and falling.

5
. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1861–65)

He was undoubtedly a brilliant wordsmith, and his speeches are among the most cherished in the country’s rich anthology. Misconstrued as an idealist, he was in fact a shrewd moderate, daring to walk the middle path when others ran to the extremes. Supremely farsighted, he endorsed bills that gave birth to a transcontinental railroad, scores of land–grant colleges, and millions of acres of humble homesteads. But as a commander in chief, Abraham Lincoln does not rank among the successful, despite having defeated a popular separatist movement within his own borders.

Questionable was his ability to spot military talent, especially in the critical eastern theater. In fact, no president has ever done as poorly in selecting commanding officers in wartime. His first choice was Irvin McDowell, who had never led troops in combat. Next came George B. McClellan, who reached the gates of Richmond in 1862, only to retreat after winning most of the battles of the Seven Days and outnumbering his opponent four to one. Next was John Pope, an insubordinate and incompetent braggart who was routed at Second Manassas by inferior numbers. Consequently, Lincoln reappointed McClellan, who proceeded to be a nonfactor at Antietam. Then there was Ambrose E. Burnside, appointed
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leading his men to slaughter against a force one-tenth his size at the south end of the Antietam battlefield. Burnside would repeat the mistake of a frontal assault at Fredericksburg a few months later, suffering more than eleven thousand casualties in a single day. Six weeks went by before Lincoln found the sense to fire him.

During the Civil War, 650,000 were killed, unknown numbers were wounded and traumatized, debt escalated, and sectional hostilities were cemented for generations to come.

Also worthy of reassessment is the president’s willingness to delegate authority despite clear instances of incompetence. Only in the case of emancipation did he override the opinion of his subordinates. The rest of the time, he consented to the opinions of “experts.”

Though he personally tested a few rapid-fire shoulder arms, he did not pressure the U.S. Army Ordnance Department to adopt the deadly weapons. He instead believed their assertions that soldiers armed with such rifles would waste ammunition. He never checked to see that it was taking an average of one thousand bullets from single-shot muzzleloaders to score one kill.

When the prisoner exchange system broke down in 1863, causing camps and stockades to overflow with POWs on both sides, Lincoln chose not to intervene. Instead, he followed the advice of War Secretary Edwin H. Stanton and refused to negotiate a settlement. In the following fifteen months, nearly fifty thousand troops perished in military prisons, mostly from disease and malnutrition. The death toll exceeded the number killed in action at the battles of Antietam, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, First and Second Manassas, Shiloh, Stones River, Spotsylvania, and the Wilderness combined.
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Lincoln also made no concerted effort to improve funding and supply for the medical corps, relying instead on help from civilian organizations, such as the U.S. Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission. In total, more than forty-three thousand Union troops died in hospitals (close to the total U.S. deaths by all causes during the Korean War).
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Most significant, he imposed no grand strategy. Not until 1864, under the direction of Lt. Gen. U. S. Grant, did the Union war efforts coordinate simultaneous attacks on five different Confederate fronts, and most of these were based on the principle of costly attrition. While it is true that he ultimately reestablished the existing borders of the United States, Lincoln did so at the cost of more than 650,000 dead North and South, a price higher than the victories of the American Revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, and the Second World War put together.

If the Civil War were fought in 2012 and the United States lost the same proportion of its population as had been killed in the War Between the States, the overall death count would be 5.8 million.

6
. JAMES MADISON

WAR OF 1812 (1812–15)

Since 1803, the legions of Napoleon had been quite busy, ruthlessly hacking away at the aging monarchies of Europe, creating a world war in the name of France. Fighting would eventually reach from the czarist gates of Moscow to the islands of the Caribbean, drawing British attention far away from the United States, which is exactly why James Madison found the courage to strike.

For years, Britain had tried to convince the United States to join its side, using that age-old method of imperial persuasion—abuse. Fostering Native American uprisings along the Great Lakes, forcing thousands of neutral American sailors into their depleted Royal Navy, and halting U.S. trade with France, the British were hoping to coerce the American states toward their way of thinking. Most offensive was the Orders in Council, a unilateral proclamation demanding all U.S. ships trading with Europe to first enter a British port for inspection.

By 1812, the normally timid “Jemmy” Madison had reached the breaking point. He resolved to declare war, quickly capture British Canada by taking its paltry few cities, and force Parliament into a speedy peace settlement. But the best-laid plans of mice and Madisons often go awry.
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Although the United States had twenty-five times the population of Canada and held the element of surprise, Madison opted to invade with several small attacks at multiple points rather than go straight for Montreal or Quebec, Britain’s right and left arm in North America. As a result, Detroit was lost without a shot, Native Americans rallied against settlers in Michigan, and forays into Ontario were driven back in short order.

By 1813, Madison was starting to lose the war, and with it, control of his own people. New York militia declined to fight outside its own borders. Clergy in New England denounced the widening conflict. Pro-British communities held fasting days in protest. Commercially connected to London more than Washington, Massachusetts considered seceding from the Union. Lured by high profits, citizens smuggled foodstuffs to the British fleet blockading the eastern seaboard.
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In 1814, the president also experienced the shame of abandoning the national capital to enemy troops and losing most of the federal buildings in the city, including the White House, to looting and arson.

He had hoped to win quickly, yet it was the protraction of the war that ultimately saved Madison. By the end of 1814, the United States had been at war for nearly three years and had lost well over twenty-two hundred troops, but the British had been fighting in Europe for more than a decade and had lost approximately two hundred thousand dead and missing. Weary and ready for peace, both sides agreed to the Treaty of Ghent, which simply maintained the old Canada–U.S. border and did nothing to settle the issues that had precipitated the war in the first place.
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