OT mysterious quote (was: Horcrus disposal (was Re: The List update))

[Eustace_Scrubb]

Eustace_Scrubb:
> > Being a pedant (and a historian), I tried to find where
> > Everything2.com was getting the source of the quote...and I can't find
> > any direct attribution of this to MacArthur--only through the
Princess Bride connection.
> 

Pippin:
> MacArthur met with JFK in April of 1961 and advised that "it would
> be a mistake to fight in Laos" and that the line should be held at
> Formosa, Japan and the Phillipines. 
> http://millercenter.virginia.edu/pubs/prp_stories/macarthur_china.pdf
> 
> It seems that this became "it would be a mistake to
> fight in Southeast Asia" in popular memory.
> 
> Noam Chomsky in Rethinking Camelot quotes an article by Raskin 
> writing in The American Historical Review that MacArthur's successor  
> Ridgway "argued in a continuous barrage of memoranda that the United 
> should steer clear of an Asian land war." I haven't been able to 
> trace this one further though. Does anyone have access to the Raskin 
> article?
> http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/rc/rc-c01-s26.html
> 
> Pippin

Eustace_Scrubb again:  
Haven't found that article, but this excerpt from The Pentagon Papers
quotes President Johnson in a speech on 09-25-1964 as follows:
"There are those that say I ought to go north and drop bombs, to try
to wipe out the supply lines, and they think that would escalate the
war...But we don't want to get involved in a nation with seven hundred
million people and get tied down in a land war in Asia."

(see http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/pent6.htm)

I am beginning to think that the phrase "land war in Asia" was simply
in general use by the early-mid 1960s and that it may be difficult to
trace its origin to a specific person.  Maybe it was Scrimgeour?

Cheers, 
Eustace_Scrubb