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gsmoove23
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Eisenhower had campaigned to end the war, the fact that he used a threat of expanding the war to try to bring about peace is not at all surprising.
I would also remind you that it was Truman who started the Korean War and passed the 38th and Kennedy who escalated Vietnam, and stood down the Soviets in Cuba
Your view of the Democrats is a little flawed
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:27
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Hah, it was MacArthur who intervened to help Korea and who sought to pursue the NK's North. As I said before, had Truman been left to make these decisons on his own, he would have probably decided to do nothing.
Kennedy got the missiles out of Cuba, but at what price? And the question must be asked, why were they there in the first place? Weakness at the Bay of Pigs, weakness at the first summit, doing nothing about the Berlin Wall except struting around and declaring he was a hotdog, "Ich bin ein Berliner."
Then when the missiles were still being set up in Cuba and he could have taken them out, or he could have invaded Cuba and solved the problem of Castro once and for all, he capitulates and guarantees that the US will never invade Cuba, giving the Soviets a base of operation in the America's. So much for the Monroe Doctrine.
On IndoChina, he first surrenders in Laos by accepting a coaltion government that was to be "neutral." As soon as the ink was dry, the NV began subverting that government as everyone predicted. Eisenhower had said that control of Laos was critical to the defense of SV. But Kennedy capitulated.
Next he "supports" SV by sending in minimal US forces and by assassnating Diem. He carefully avoids threatening the North with War unless they back off. What kind of ally is this?
Then we have Johnson. 'Nuff said.
McGovern promised to crawl on his yellow belly all the way to Hanoi for peace.
Jimmy Carter took his quest to undermine dictators by undermining first pro-US dictators while coddling communist dictators. He caused the fall of Iran. But, to his credit, he supported the resistence in Afghanistan.
Clinton was our first anti-military president. Yet, as we saw, he began to have a positive effect later in his presidency when he used that same military to fix some troubled areas of the globe. His critics often said it was merely Wag the Dog to divert attention away from is many scandals.
See, I give some Democrats credit where credit is due. I simply believe that Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, (McGovern) and Carter were largely despicable in their conduct of foreign policy.
The Democrats, or at least some of them, know that foreign policy is a major problem for them. But, I imagine they will not nominate a pro-war Democrat that would neutralize this issue. So it will be a major issue in the next election, I predict.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:27
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I always enjoy reading Ned's version of history. It's always good for a laugh.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Tingkai
I always enjoy reading Ned's version of history. It's always good for a laugh. |
No, actually I remember a lot of it differently from how many here protray the historical events. I remember my Dad, who served under MacArthur, saying at the time that Truman was the worst president we had ever had. His popularity was lower than even Grey Davis of California, the worst in US history by a sitting president.
At the time, MacArhtur was a genuine hero to most Americans.
So when I see the conventional wisdom concerning Truman and MacArthur be 100% reversed from what it was then, I just have to correct the record a little.
As to Kennedy, the conventional wisdom at the time was that he was being severely tested by communism. A lot of this had to do with the Bay of Pigs. As to Laos, many were dismayed at Kennedy's sellout. The Cuban missle crisis, at the time, seemed to be a feather in Kennedy's cap. But when the news about the guarantee to Castro and the Atlas missiles in Turkey emerged, we began to suspect that what Kennedy achieved was only a partial victory.
At the time, most Americans supported putting troops into Vietnam. We even supported the Tonkin Gulf resolution. We had no idea that Vietnam would become such a bloodbath.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:27
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my grandmother refuses to talk about anything before 1953.
grandfather pass away twelve years ago.
and my mom, eldest of her siblings, was born right at the start of the war.
she doesn't remember it.
i don't know how any of those stories can be "cool".
===
as for truman... i think it was a damn foolish thing for him to do, firing macarthur. then again, it was his advisors who decided where korea should be partitioned: the 38th parallel seemed nice, quoth acheson (sp?).
at least truman partially redeemed himself by committing us forces there, even if he didn't win the war.
by the way: china had always intended to take part in the korean war; between july and september, the chinese leadership had created an entire army, 260k strong, in manchuria ready to strike into korea. it would, of course, be used to drive back "imperialistic american aggression", and would serve as an example to taiwan (china had originally intended to focus on taiwan, but kim il sung decided to change that~). mao himself was in favor of intervention--and during that time, mao's word was, in effect, what went.
(source: Mao's China and the Cold War, Chen Jian (2001))
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gsmoove23
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He was sensitive to the cross border thing because he could foresee the results. Having reconaissance overflights of a sovereign nation are extremely provocative. If they had stopped significantly short of the chinese border there would have been little problem, the Korean war wasn't a civil war, we had no rights to invade the country, except to wring a peace deal out of the N. Koreans.
With all your provocation where do you see an end? You think all we had to do was rattle our sabers louder and the Chinese and Russians would simply clam up? Ridiculous.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
See, I give some Democrats credit where credit is due. I simply believe that Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, (McGovern) and Carter were largely despicable in their conduct of foreign policy.
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Ned: I'm surprised that you disagree with Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan and its foreign policy implication.
Nice to see that even you agree that a Democrat president did the right thing.
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gsmoove23
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Q Cubed, the moralistic arguement of wiping out communism in N. Korea is useless for the time since the RoK was hardly a paragon of democracy. It was power gaming between capitalism and communism and nothing more. S korea may have had an arguement to invade and occupy N. Korea but the US and UN did not.
Furthermore, China and Russia had as good an arguement to interfere n N.Korea as we had to keep missiles out of Cuba. It was in the reasonable interests of their own security that a directly bordering country was not closely allied to a power hostile to them.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:27
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never have i said that skorea was a paragon of democracy. it still isn't, what with political enemies conveniently smeared with charges of having corrupt family members or communist links...
wait...
===
i'm well aware that skorea hasn't been the epitome of democracy. what are you expecting? the nation was barely third world in the aftermath of the war, constantly under the threat and pressure of more soviet/communist aggression, and conveniently ignored by pretty much everyone else in the world. the conditions were ripe for an authoritarian regime.
even so, how does that make the moralist argument useless?
had the un soundly defeated the inmungun and the pla, you wouldn't have the human rights violations on the scale you have today in nkorea. far fewer people would have suffered under the stalinist thuggery of the "great leader". quite possibly, no terrorist acts would have occured in skorea. families in korea wouldn't be split in two, with neither party being able to see each other.
i don't know about you, but between a stalinist state and an authoritarian regime that's ostensibly a democracy, i'd pick the latter. at least in the latter one the chances of human rights violations are several times smaller, and odds are slightly better that you'd be able to escape to a friendlier country.
in truth, when has an aggressor nation not been itself invaded, once it found itself on the losing side? you forfeit your right to not be invaded and occupied the instant you invade someone else, at least for the duration of that war--and that's what the korean war was. if you look at it as two separate nations, both of them lost their right to not be invaded and occupied; if you look at it as a civil war, it was one nation trying to solve an internal conflict, and both sides brought in outside assistance.
there's no "may have had an argument", skorea HAD an argument: fight and defeat the aggressor nation, and reunify all of korea under one banner (it is interesting to note that both governments declared themselves as the only official government of the entire peninsula). its allies, which pretty much boiled down to the UN, are therefore obliged to assist in obtaining those objectives--and that they tried to do.
as for the second part of your post... mao was going to invade/support nkorea anyway, security issue or not. your point?
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gsmoove23
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Whats happening now is kind of irrelevant, they could have hardly foreseen it in the 50s. Should we have helped our allies the S. Koreans take all of the peninsula? Not directly. It was more along the lines of a mutual defense pact and certainly not, we'll help you acheive all of your desires. We have our own concerns to worry about first.
As for Mao supporting N.Korea, he said if UNO forces passed the 38th he would support N.Korea, then if they get withing 20 miles of the border. He was willing to offer a good deal of leeway, and his entering the war was hardly certain.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:27
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gsmoove, that wasn't the case at all.
a) there was a mutual defense pact; however, the un was not bound by said mutual defense pact.
b) the countries that contributed did so on a voluntary basis. if they had their own concerns, perhaps they wouldn't have sent anyone.
c) mao's statement about the crossing was only political posturing. as i've referenced in a previous post, mao's actions prior to china's entry into the war were all about preparing for engagement. mao himself saw the korean conflict as a means by which the asian revolution could be used to beat back american "imperialism" and "arrogance"--and this was in july 1950, scarcely 1 month into the war (ch4, Mao's China and the Cold War; Chen Jian, 2001).
his entry into the war was all but certain.
besides, it's a moot point: i'll explain it to you very carefully now. there's no way you're ever going to get me to budge on this particular matter. why? because although my family comes from the south, i have never met, and probably will never meet, the thin branch of my family that got stuck in that godforsaken northern half. as far as i'm concerned, there is no way that the un destroying the communist north and unifying it under an authoritarian but ostensibly democratic korea couldn't be morally justified.
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02-05-2003 04:15
Whew, that's a relief. For a moment I thought you might be advocating reckless action.
Why wasn't I informed??
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