Volume 54, Number 16 · October 25, 2007
Good War Gone Bad
By Richard J. Bernstein
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
by David Halberstam
Hyperion, 719 pp., $35.00
On March 7, 1951, at a press conference, Douglas MacArthur, commander of all United States forces in the Pacific, spoke contemptuously of the way his commander in the field, Matthew B. Ridgway, was fighting the Korean War. Ridgway, MacArthur said, was following an ineffectual strategy, gaining a little here, losing a little there, aiming not at victory but at stalemate, and, MacArthur implied, it was unworthy of the United States to fight for anything but complete victory. The phrase MacArthur planted into the lexicon of military belittlement to characterize Ridgway's strategy was 'accordion war.'
Review, 4195 words
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