"Korea was not vital to U.S. interests but Truman and his aides were determined to respond to what they saw as Soviet-inspired aggression. They approved what Truman would call a “police action,” not a full-fledged war, wary of potential Soviet countermoves in Europe or the Middle East. To seize the initiative, MacArthur launched a daring amphibious landing at Inchon, behind enemy lines, in September 1950. A month later, U.S. troops captured Pyongyang, the northern capital, and then, despite orders from Washington, pushed north to the Chinese border. They’d be home by Christmas, the general promised. Instead, the Chinese invaded that December, overwhelming and outmaneuvering American troops. MacArthur again claimed utter surprise and Brands surprisingly ignores scholarship that shows he and his aides discounted or dismissed multiple reports of a Chinese military buildup in the area. Refusing to concede any errors, MacArthur urged Washington to let him expand the war by bombing bases in China. His threats — including one to plant minefields with radioactive waste — worried allies, created turmoil in Washington and irked Truman no end. The final provocation came when MacArthur publicly called for all-out war against China just as Truman was trying to coax the Chinese into peace talks. “Rank insubordination,” Truman angrily wrote in his diary. The general, he decided, had to go. MacArthur’s star quickly faded back home. Gen. Omar Bradley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helped seal his fate when he told Congress that the general’s “strategy would involve us in the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy.”"