June 25, 1950

The Korean War began.

My father was stationed with the 64th Field Artillery attached to the 25th Infantry Division in Japan. They were understrength, undertrained, and not prepared for war. President Harry Truman ordered the 24th Division and the 25th Division to Korea almost immediately.

We Americans generally don't like studying the Korean War as much as World War II or the Vietnam War. You could count on your hands all the books on the Korean War in almost any library or book store. We are intrigued by WWII because we won decisively. We are intrigued by the Vietnam War because we lost, but we can agree neither as to why nor about the lessons.

In Korea, however, we won, not decisively, but we achieved our limited objective of preserving S. Korean independence and preventing coerced reunification of Korea under Kim Il-Sung and the Korean Communist Party. In the process, we were caught in the beginning no better prepared than we were at Pearl Harbor and Manila in 1941 or the Ardennes in 1944. Our lack of preparation should have been the biggest scandal of the war, but there were others:

the capture of Gen. Wm. F. Dean, commander of the 24th Division, by the N. Koreans,

complete lack of preparation for the Chinese counterattack in the winter of 1950, which resulted in a defeat as embarrassing as Gen. Wm. Howe's easy capture of New York City in 1776,

the revolt in a POW camp that resulted in the taking of the U.S. commander of the camp hostage by Chinese communists detained there,

cynical attempts by Republican congressmen in the opposition to use bad news from the war to discredit the hated president who had bested them in 1948,

and the refusal of some captured U.S. soldiers to be repatriated after the truce.

The Korean War was a true "quagmire" once the front lines settled on the 38th parallel during 1951. The peace talks lasted two years and broke down often, usually because of U.S. insistence that captured enemy soldiers who did not wish to be repatriated should be allowed to stay south of the 38th parallel. (The N. Koreans and Chinese would not concede that any of their captured soldiers would even consider refusing repatriation.)

The Korean War was a messy win akin to an 15-13 extra-inning victory in baseball or perhaps a football game played in the mud with multiple turnovers which results in a 3-0 victory (like Alabama-LSU in 1979). The Korean War was nonetheless a victory. I know it was a victory because I have taught or befriended dozens of Koreans who would not be able to travel freely if they lived north of the 38th parallel. They have a home that is more free and prosperous than all but a few dozen countries in the world. We won, and we saved millions of Koreans from the fate of having to worship "The Great Leader" while starving to death without any right of dissent. We all would like to take back some bad decisions of those days, but 49 million Koreans live in freedom and hope while 23 million N. Koreans live in the world's largest gulag.

A few lessons for today:

The President of the U.S. on the morning of January 20, 1953 was Harry Truman, whose poll numbers resembled those of George W. Bush today.

S. Korea looked far more backward and barbaric in 1953 than Iraq does today.

S. Korea had little capital, few natural resources, and little experience in self-government in 1953.

S. Korea had endured brutal and terrible governance for most of a half-century prior to 1953. S. Korea had no middle class capable of governing and leading a modern republic.

S. Korea was (and in many ways still is) a traditional society in which family, ancestry, and lineage often trumped merit.

S. Korea's leader in 1953, Syngman Rhee, looked liked a waste of a bet, a third-world basket case.

S. Korea's army in 1953 could not have fought its way out of a paper bag.

S. Korea's police in 1953 could not have kept the peace in Mayberry, R.F.D.

The Henny Pennys of the world clucked: "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" in 1950-53 as they do today.


I won't take this analogy any farther. Korea and Iraq are as different as Japan and Lebanon. No country is more than a catastrophe or two away from anarchy. The success of S. Korea during the last half-century was not inevitable, and just because an unpopular war in one unfortunate country saved 49 million from slavery does not mean that Iraq's people are going to be envied by their neighbors anytime soon. Nonetheless, it is a human tendency to develop a narrative that can explain current events. A large portion of the USA considers the Vietnam War to be the governing paradigm for our foreign policy and military capabilities. What if it is not?