Posted on 10/21/2002 1:54:42 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stated that North Korea has a small number of nuclear weapons. It has now been acknowledged that the Korean communists ignored the 1994 agreement with the Clinton Administration to freeze nuclear weapons development. The stage was set for this present crisis in the early 1950's when the Korean War was deliberately and treacherously ended with a stalemate between north and south. As our government and military now prepare for war against Iraq, it is instructive to review American policies that led to the Korean stalemate.
Korea was under Japanese occupation at the time of the 1943 Cairo Conference attended by Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek where it was agreed that a post war Korea would be "free and independent." Two years later at the Potsdam Conference, attended by Truman, Churchill and Stalin, the policy was strangely reversed with a call for Korea to be divided along the 38th Parallel with the north handed over to Stalin. The allied excuse for betraying Korea was an alleged need to reward Stalin for entering the war against Japan. At the time, Germany had already surrendered and the Soviets would be allowed to enter the Japanese theatre the week of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. North Korea and other Far East territories would be subsequently handed over to the Soviets.
The Soviets installed Marxist fanatic Kim Sung Chu, calling himself "Kim Il Sung" after an anti-Japanese Korean guerilla fighter, as their North Korean stooge. South Korea would elect an Assembly, which chose as President the great statesman Syngman Rhee who had headed the Korean government in exile for decades.
After fortifying North Korea with 15 infantry and 2 armored divisions, 150 T-34 tanks and 200 Yak fighter planes, the Soviets demanded that all allied forces withdraw from the south. The U.S. complied with this demand. Major General Courtney Whitney observed "The State Department made its unilateral decision to limit South Korea's defensive force to light weapons and to organize the defenders along constabulary lines." State Department official Owen Lattimore stated at the time "The thing to do is let South Korea fall, but not to let it look as if we pushed it."
After the 1950 invasion of South Korea by the north, President Truman finally authorized American military support, under U.N.command, with South Korea clinging to a toe of land around the city of Pusan. Truman refused to accept an offer made at the time by Taiwan, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, to send 33,000 seasoned troops to aid South Korea. Instead, Truman ordered the American Seventh Fleet into the straits of Formosa both to prevent Taiwan from helping Korea and from invading communist controlled Mainland China. It should be noted that in 1950, Mao Tse-tung had not yet consolidated control over China and that Chiang was still very much in a position to liberate his country from the enveloping communist jack-boot. This inexplicable action by Truman would free China up to fight in Korea without fear of an invasion from Taiwan.
General Douglas MacArthur, the great military hero of World War II, pulled off one of the most audacious and successful military maneuvers in history with the American landing at Inchon. In a short period of time, Seoul would be re-captured, 130,000 troops taken prisoner, and the fleeing North Koreans would abandon arms, equipment and tanks on the highways. Not surprisingly, the liberating army discovered much evidence of atrocities and mass murder committed by the communist occupiers.
Truman responded to the liberation of Korea by strangely granting Red China military sanctuary in Manchuria. The book "MacArthur: 1941-1951" states "This limitation upon available military force to repel an enemy attack would have no precedent either in our own history or in the history of the world. That the Red Chinese commander apparently knew such a decision would be forthcoming while General MacArthur did not, represents one of the blackest pages ever recorded." MacArthur stated in an interview he granted shortly before his death in 1965 "every message he sent to Washington during the Korean War was turned over by the State Department to the British, who, in turn, leaked it to Moscow" and that Truman refused his entreaties to investigate the leaks.
Red China stormed into Korea November 26, 1950 with the knowledge that their home base in Manchuria would be safe from attack. While the Red Chinese attacked, airfields and depots in clear view across the Yalu River in Manchuria would be free from attack. Communist MiGs could attack with impunity as retaliation was only allowed on the Korean side of the river. Air Force Lieutenant General George Stratemeyer stated (US News and World Report 2/11/55) "We had sufficient air, bombardment, fighters, reconnaissance so that I could have taken out all those supplies, those airdromes on the other side of the Yalu; I could have bombed the devils between there and Mukden, stopped that railroad operating and the people of China that were fighting could not have been suppliedbut we weren't permitted to do it. As a result, a lot of American blood was spilled over there in Korea."
Wasn't Lattimore secretly a communist and associate of Alger Hiss?
IMHO MacArthur should have been relieved, not for the reasons Truman did, but because his own king-sized ego produced one of the worst military disasters in US history. There was ample evidence that the Chinese had infiltrated North Korea in force, and Mac refused to give it any credience because he was convinced that Chinese were hopeless as soldiers and fit only as laundrymen. He made no effort to fortify the Army's lines of retreat, and made no contingencies for what came to happen. Thousands of Americans paid for his arrogance with their lives. It was a dismal end to an otherwise brilliant career. He may have been right about attacking the Chicoms in Manchuria, but that was after the damage was done.
The best things that can be said about Truman is that he eventually turned on the Pendergast machine and exited the Presidency with dignity-- relatively impoverished and walking to the Washington RR station with a suitcase in each hand. Herbert Hoover, a self-made multimillionaire, actually subsidized Truman's living allowance from his own pocket until congress passed a small pension for former presidents.
Dont confuse Roosevelt with Truman ... Roosevelt was a loony one-worlder whose advisors (Ickes) and wife, like Hillary, were deep down socialists. And Roosevelt had many communists, and a few spies like Hiss, on the payroll. Think how loony this is: roosevely thought he could trust Stalin, more so than churchill! actually it's not so loony, when you consider that Clinton thought he could trust Arafat, and saw him more than his own CIA director. Same kind of elitist egotism and disregard for our real interests.
Alger Hiss was at some of these meteings, like Tehran. By 1945, the post-war framework was baked in. We were giving Stalin a piece of the post-war europe. It wasnt supposed to mean eastern europe would go commnunists, that actually took years to achieve, but the Iron Curtain descending was an inevtiable result of Roosevelt's giveaways.
Truman was not an elitist like Roosevelt. A failed shopkeeper who knew the corruption of politics, he was in the current palance too "simple-minded" to confuse globalist claptrap for our real interests. So he save Berlin with an airlift. He adopted containment. He defended Korea. etc. etc.
The real scary thought is this: In 1944, Truman was a 'compromise' VP because the segregationists could not tolerate Wallace, the left-wing commie sympathizer. Had Roosevelt kept Wallace on, history would have been different.
Guess that makes the author ignorant, or Doug a Soviet spy.
I wish I'd never read history books - it makes these threads so depressing.
So not only does the author of this misleading piece ignore the strategic reality of the situation that brought the Russians into the fray, he has the temerity to ignore MacArthur's role in the 5 years leading up to the Communist invasion:
By American design, the ROK Army was to have only a limited defensive ability. As MacArthur stated in a directive issued on March 7, 1949, the ROK Army should be capable of offering "token resistance" to invasion but should be "so organized as to indicate clearly its peaceful purpose"
pp 32-3 Goulden Korea, The Untold Story of the War
Furthermore, with the luxury of 50 years hindsight he manages to overlook our main concerns of the time, i.e. war with the Soviets in Europe (which we were inadequately prepared for) or a Soviet move on Japan, and urge actions which would have started that WW3 over a country which our initial post war in theater conflict planning envisioned abandonment and neutralization by bombing if need be.
Simply, Chuck here knows not that of which he writes.
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