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Stillwell and the American Experience in China ReviewI read this book over 20 years ago. I sometimes bought the paperback to give to friends. It was that good and true and well-written, to me. In brief, Stillwell was a four-star general who was attached to the nationalists during WWII. His rank was equal to Eisenhower and MacArthur. Tuchman is very sympathetic to Stillwell, emphasizing his fluency in the Chinese language and knowledge of the country and its politics. He had served in China as a career army officer between the world wars and often traveled about disguised as a native.He detested Chiang Kai-Shek, who he considered to be a warlord and coward. Stillwell suggested overtures to Mao, to use him to fight the Japanese and even consider them as future rulers of China. In 1944 Stillwell was sent back to the states. His stance against Kai-Shek did not sit well with the China Lobby (pro-Chiang lobby) in the USA.
What I most remember about the book after all these years is 1) Stillwell led an Indian Jones life, even leading his defeated troops on foot out of Burma 2) Stillwell was right about Mao and the China Lobby (Luce at Time magazine and others) was wrong, 3) and when China fell the Democrats and Chinese Experts in the State department were blamed for "losing" China. All these Chinese speaking Experts, often children of missionaries, knew the language and the greater region of East and Southeast Asia. They all got purged in the days of McCarthy. Nobody of competence was around to raise red flags as we got sucked into Viet Nam in the late 50s and early 60s.
There are today way too few Arab speaking experts in the State Department. George W. Bush, being briefed by exiled Iraqis, just weeks before pre-emptive war, revealed no clue that there were Sunni and Shiite and Kurdish factions in Iraq (see Packer's book, Assassin's Gate). This is what I mean by my title, a paraphrase of a famous remark, history is always the same, and the players just change.
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