"Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."
Oscar Wilde

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Victory in Korea

The Korean War is a very interesting topic for me, mostly because I hold a very controversial opinion about it. I wish to prove that the Korean War was an American victory.
Allow me to explain:  the American goal in this war was to push the invading North Koreans back across the 38th parallel, and by doing so prevent the spread of communism in Asia. Now, our troops rolled into South Korea when North Korea was on the point of triumph. They had pushed the South Korean forces back onto a small pennisula in the southeastern corner of the country. Our front line of troops charged onto the North Koreans, and with the help of a brilliant strategem by General Macarthur, pushed the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel. We eventually went on to the border of North Korea and China, where we were struck with disaster. China invaded North Korea and pushed the us all the way back to the 38th parallel. We can blame this wholesale Chinese victory on General Macarthur and his amazing levels of egoism. However, our troops regrouped at the 38th parallel and inflicted a total of 900,000 casualties on the Chinese and 520,000 on the North Koreans. Despite the wholesale route from the border of North Korea and China, the U.S. only lost 52,000 men. This is obviously a horrendous number, but compared to the enemy losses, it is relatively trivial.
After signing a treaty with North Korea, we departed, having made our point. I believe we certainly halted the flow of communism in Asia, as we showed that we would ravage any Communist enemy who attempted to invade an innocent country. Now some may say that  Vietnam became Communist as well, but I will state that during this war they were already Communist, and fighting a war with the French. Having made this point, no country in Asia turned Communist after the Korean War.
Is that not a victory? We did what we were there to do! Just because we suffered heavy casualties and were whipped all the way back to the 38th parallel by China should not mean that we lost. Keep in mind that we whipped North Korea all the way to the border of China. I do not consider the Korean War a tie, or a draw, or a loss, I consider it a victory!

5 comments:

  1. Like Herodotus says, "a pyrrhic victory." One in which the winner suffers great loss.

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  2. The loss of life is never trivial. The Korean War soldiers did not die in vain and I am glad that you can see it as a victory-although a very sad one with a very high cost. I also like Practically Quixotic comment. Thanks for sharing your ideas. Keep it up!

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  3. *smiles at caneguy's comment* This comment is actually unrelated to the post; I was just wondering if you named your schooner yet, Jack!?

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  4. No... I haven't yet named my schooner... I'm unsure what to call it. However, I believe I am going to name it *The Odyssey.* I haven't yet completely decided, however. The pressure of decision.... :)

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