May 31, 2007
FORTUNATELY, TRUMAN WASN'T IN CHARGE THIS TIME:
Iraq Is Korea?: Bush's latest appalling historical analogy. (Fred Kaplan, May 31, 2007, Slate)
In 1950, the United States beat back North Korea's invasion of South Korea, became embroiled in a Chinese-assisted guerrilla war, fought the Communists to a stalemate, and, in 1953, after suffering 54,000 combat deaths, negotiated a truce (but not a formal peace). Ever since, American troops—at present, 37,000 of them, stationed at 95 installations across the Korean peninsula—have remained on guard at the world's most heavily armed border.In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew its regime (which posed a hypothetical threat), and, in the four years since, has kept about 150,000 troops in the country to kill terrorists (who weren't in Iraq before the war), to train the Iraqi army (which the Bush administration, for still-mysterious reasons, dismantled at the occupation's outset), and to keep a "low-grade" sectarian civil war (which erupted amid a vacuum of authority) from boiling over.
In the half-century-plus since the Korean armistice of 1953, just 90 U.S. soldiers have been killed in isolated border clashes in Korea. In the mere four years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, more than 3,000 American servicemen and women have been killed, and the number rises every day.
To sum up, we intervened in South Korea as a response to an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to contain Communist aggression.
It certainly is an interesting comparison, though imprecise: while we intervened in Iraq because it invaded its neighbors and as part of a broader policy to ensure that a state that sponsored terrorism couldn't hand out WMD, we have sustained almost no casualties in the intervening 16 years and rather than simply quarantining the evil regime and starving the people under its control have sought to provide liberal democracy to all. That's led to a state of affairs that is less quiet but substantially less lethal and entirely more consistent with our values than the one we've imposed on the Korean Peninsula. It does seem unlikely that the Iraqis will require or want a US troop presence for fifty years, but we'd hardly notice such a minimal one so should stay if they want us to. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2007 7:03 PM
Well stated Orrin.
"[...]In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew its regime (which posed a hypothetical threat), and, in the four years since, has kept about 150,000 troops in the country to kill terrorists (who weren't in Iraq before the war)[...]"
Kaplan must have forgotten that the Chinese weren't in Korea before the war either.
The war became unpopular when MacArthur ignored field intelligence that the Chinese had entered the war in force and drove us back within South Korea and the 1st Marine Division was almost trapped in the North in late 1950. And the war became even more unpopular when the truce lines were stabilized and the outpost war began trading KIA's for meaningless hills while negotiations dragged on at Panmunjom.
Not to mention the POW riots at the island prison camp where they captured an American General.
When have we ever had a popular war? Don't give me WW2. But at least in those days the country pulled together.