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lazarus1983 -> The Korean War (12/8/2007 3:50:04 PM)
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I'm a big fan of military history, and for the most part the Vietnam Conflict has been my favored reading. However lately, the often overlooked Korean War has gained my attention. I read through David Halberstam's latest release, "The Coldest Winter," and am almost done with Clay Blair's classic behemoth, "The Forgotten War."
After reading and learning so much about this war, I can't believe that it is so incredibly, and criminally, overlooked. It's a mere footnote in the history of the world, sandwiched between The Great War and The Controversial Conflict. It has no identity of its own, no movies (with the exception of MASH, which was an alleghory for Vietnam), no video games, no real monuments, no nothing.
So, this is an attempt to get some discussion started about Korea. I'll kick it off by throwing out a few interesting facts:
We were so unprepared for war, thanks to Truman's heinous budget cutting, that at one point we were actually pulling down old Sherman tanks that were being used as monuments at Fort Hood and sending them over to Korea.
We sure did love our atom bomb, back then. Plans to bomb this or bomb that were thrown about quite casually. In fact, General Omar Bradley believed that with the advent of atom bombs, amphibious landings would be a thing of the past.
Speaking of ol' Bradley, he was actually instrumental in stopping a mutiny against President Truman. Due to the aforementioned budget cuts, the top admirals of the Navy mutinied against Truman, going before Congress and speaking out against him. It took General Bradley to come out and put these admirals in their place, originating the term, "Fancy Dan's."
The invasion of South Korea would not have happened had Kim Il Sung not had the approval from Moscow. Ironically, had Moscow not allowed Kim Il Sung to invade, then Truman probably never would have authorized massive spending for the military. Essentially, if not for Korea, we never would have been in a position to oppose the spread of Communism and fight the Cold War.
General MacArthur's famed Inchon landing wasn't that brilliant. A landing at a port behind enemy lines is actually standard army tactics in a peninsular war. And the landing at Inchon itself was proposed at the outset of the war by Pentagon staffers.
MacArthur himself had ample warning that Chinese troops had entered North Korea and were preparing to attack the US and South Korean troops. Dozens of Chinese troops had been captured weeks before the CCF armies attacked. Yet MacArthur and his staff insisted that they were liars, or Chinese that had volunteered to fight.
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