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¶ State Department policies lost China to the Communists. "The myth that China fell because the Chinese troops refused to fight is again refuted by sworn testimony . . . Effective military aid . . . might have defeated the Communists." Dean Acheson's claim that the Administration supported the Chiang Kai-shek government belies the facts. Some U.S. officials were so opposed to Chiang that "they were automatically on the side of the Red regime," and should be investigated. If the Chiang government was, in some instances, corrupt and decadent, "certainly there can be no greater corruption than that found in the Communist world wherein whole nations are forcibly brought to slavery." Added footnote: "Deep freeze, pastel mink, RFC and organized crime and dope would furnish ample material for a Chinese writer to discuss corruption in some other quarter."
¶ In its secret directive, issued Dec. 23, 1949, on Formosa, the State Department helped "to prepare the way for the abandonment of Formosa to the Chinese Reds . . . No matter how the directive is explained, it reflects little credit to the honor and dignity of the United States."
¶ The U.S. backed the Administration's decision to fight in Korea because it thought there was a competent military plan of strategy. There was none. The "only one positive plan for victory in the Korean war" was Douglas MacArthur's.
¶ "We are unable to comprehend why the Administration [refused] the offer of 33,000 fighting men [for Korea] advanced by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek."
¶ "Any peace short of the liberation and unification of Korea is a delusion. Any settlement at the 38th parallel is a Chinese Communist victory."
¶ The MacArthur hearings were in the public interest, forced the State Department to make "a major shift" in foreign policy. "The ground swell of American public opinion, which expressed itself in one of the greatest floods of spontaneous correspondence which has ever descended upon the legislative and executive branch of the government, required the State Department to alter policies which were disapproved by the public."
