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The price of failure in the Korean War (Bruce Walker, December 6, 2010, Enter Stage Right)

Sixty years ago, Kim Il Sung, the Communist dictator of North Korea, launched an unprovoked attack on South Korea. This aggression was supported by Russia and China (the Soviet Union provided MIG pilots; the Chinese provided masses of "volunteers") and the entire peninsula became a battlefield. The fighting ended in a ceasefire, leaving what we have today, an uneasy armistice of a divided nation. This was not inevitable. We had the power to defeat Korean and Chinese communists and, if push came to shove, to even threaten the fledging fiend of the People's Republic.

US soldiers during the Korean WarAfter the loss of so many American lives in the "Forgotten War," surely our dead soldiers deserved something better than a ceasefire as their memorial. The Korean War could have ended, as MacArthur and others wanted, with a united Korea as part of the free world. This Korea would not have been perfect in the beginning, but like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, it would have evolved into just the sort of nation we want: a peaceful, democratic, free, prosperous ally. This Korea would not have acquired nuclear weapons or threatened the world with war.

But these benefits would only have been the public blessings of a united and free Korea. The Eyes of God, which see hidden tortures and hears lonely screams, perceives five decades of deliberate starvation, torture, thought control, and imprisoned souls, the bitter fruits of that vast Gulag we call North Korea. Dr Rummel, who has made a study of "Death by Government," places the democide of the Korean people by the Communist regime at 1.6 million plus 1.4 million murdered by Communists during the war…just through 1987. What is goodness if it is not ending the agony of these millions?

A prime good in our victory over Nazism was the liberation of death camps and concentration camps filled with hungry, terrified Jews, Poles, gypsies, homosexuals, Christian clergy, and all other "undesirables."

...except that we only liberated half of Germany and nothing to its East. The loss of WWII set the pattern for the tragedy of Korea.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 6, 2010 6:32 AM