They warned us but we wouldn’t listen

“Of the American military miscalculations of the twentieth century, Douglas MacArthur’s decision to send his troops all the way to the Yalu stands alone. (Vietnam was a political miscalculation and the chief architects of it were civilians.) All sorts of red flags were there for him, flags that he chose not to see. So it was that his troops, their command split, their communications often dangerously weak, the weather worsening by the day, pushed north, while the Chinese watched and patiently waited for them on the high hills, already preparing to block the narrow arteries of retreat or escape. . . . Of the many professional sins of which Douglas MacArthur was guilty at that moment, including hubris and vanity, none was greater than his complete underestimation of his enemy.” – David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter (emphasis in original)