Sixty years ago today, we signed the armistice that ended the Korean War. If it had gone on for another year, my father might have had to fight in it. And I might not be here. It took a few decades, but South Korea really came around, and it’s shocking how much better they are doing than North Korea. I guess you can argue that the war was worth it, but the outcome wasn’t very satisfactory at the time, and we’re still living with the consequences.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I certainly would argue that the war was worth it. One look at North Korea today should be sufficient evidence.
The outcome could have been better in any number of ways, but the American public was sick of the war and wanted it over.
Or North Korea today is a consequence of US and China intervention. Which not only didn’t make the death of 38,000 US soldiers and millions of Koreans “worth it,” but also consigned millions of N. Koreans to a life and world stuck in an Orwellian version of 1950.
That’s pretty interesting from a utilitarian perspective.
The flip side is Vietnam, in which the communists took over and united the country, and has begun to liberalize its markets and open up to the outside world.
I think a lot of the reasons why North Korea got so left behind is the family stuff. The two communist nations that have been ruled by one family (the Kims in DPRK and the Castros in Cuba) are basically time capsules – substantially less modernized than the rest of the world.
Just right.
There’s no way a Ho Chi Minh-led government would put out press releases about magical golf skeelz.
At a certain point, we need to acknowledge that the North Korean regime is a blame for the state of their country.
The two communist nations that have been ruled by one family (the Kims in DPRK and the Castros in Cuba) are basically time capsules – substantially less modernized than the rest of the world.
North Korea is by their own choice. We are doing it to Cuba.
We have a trade embargo with Cuba but the rest of the world has much better relations with them. Our policy hurts them but much of the pain is still self-inflicted.
Also, we have exerted pressure on other countries to join in inflicting economic harm on North Korea in a way we have not done with Cuba.
Another American intervention in a UN fig0leaf into someone else’s civil war.
We should have stayed out.
I’m surprised we went in. So far as I know, neither Korea has oil.
The outcome – South Korea protected from an aggressive North Korea – was achieved years before the fighting ended. The effort to roll back North Korea and unite the country was futile overreach, and the American public gets sick of futility.
Was it worth it? ?
From the number of U.S. Marines and Army troops killed and maimed, I say NO.
From a personal perspective – well . . .
My family lived in a rural part of south eastern Massachusetts. I was in high school. Down the street from us a family moved into a new, just built house. Mom, Dad and two kids. The oldest, a boy was five years younger than me but the same age as my brother.
He had been a Marine that was evacuated from the Pusan Perimeter during six week battle.
He left most of his left leg there. He became an alcoholic as did his wife, just to have company, I suppose. Both died much to young.
So, basically, I am against war and guns.
On the oft quoted height difference between the Koreas:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17774210
I asked my buddy, the Korean War vet about this today. The Korean War is not over. We signed a peace treaty with China, but only have a truce with North Korea. Technically, we are still at war.
When it’s over, maybe we will know.
It also depends on how wide or narrow you want to draw the focus.
The US presence in South Korea over 25 years had the effect of subsidizing the destruction of the steel industry, shipping industry, and the shipbuilding industry in the US.
It allowed my nephew to find an adoptive family in the US, go to a prestigious state university and medical school, and become a medical researcher.
It allowed my daughter, when she was in the Navy, to spend a year in the big city and work for an Army unit.
It served to rid us one of the most preening generals prior to William Westmoreland and David Patraeus.
It established the very unhelpful precedent of entry into war without a declaration of war and without a substantive debate. The euphemism at the time was a “police action” because it was done under the flag of the UN, after Russia made the mistake of walking out of the Security Council meeting. Both of these precedents have created no end of mischief in the past 60-something years.
We had a generation of veterans who were forgotten because “they didn’t win” and set-up the misbegotten wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
But if you’re North Korean, the freezing of the military state at that time into a permanent state of existential war has caused no end of grief and pain. Probably the greatest failure of the US stubbornness to recognize a country.
Booman Tribune ~ Casual Observation
unbelievable to think that the greatest industrial state in history up to then decided to become a nation of middlemen, and that people would have allowed it to happen with so little resistance, paving the way for the ‘china phenomenon’ of today.
the japanese mastery of transistor/auto tech another precursor, mushroomed into global consumer electronics/auto domination, for a while.
asia, one big happy sweatshop, so we can live in the Cloud.
live in the cloud, with most of the people running the infrastructure here on H-1B visas from our enemy countries, China and India.
They come here, take jobs from US workers, steal our technology, and give our secrets to the Chinese and Indian technology firms at home, who then use it to further undermine us.
Is that crazy or what?
When did China and India become enemy countries just because they are economic competitors.
Someone who benefits from the industrial revolution that Samuel Slater stole from Great Britain is complaining about H1-B workers stealing our technology.
The idea that technology or any other competitive information can be bottled up is what is crazy. Patents and copyrights used to be very limited in the US to allow the growth of domestic competition. Domestic competition can’t get ahold of them now but overseas firms can. Self-inflicted wounds by transnational technology companies.
And I won’t mention the fact that all of us who are Native Americans live on stolen land and all of us white folks have been capitalized with stolen labor.
What do you mean by patents used to be limited to domestic firms? Foreign entities have been allowed to file for over a century, and were granted 12-month foreign priority benefit since 1901.
Oh I see. Before the US firms dominated the world patent market to abuse monopolies but now many other nations are getting patents to disrupt this old hedgmony.
Both patents and copyright used to be limited grants of privilege of license for a short period of time. Now with the evolution of the notion of “intellectual property” they are separated from their inventors and creators through assignment and granted privileges for longer and longer times. And no one knows what will happen with the trade agreements currently being negotiated in secret.
Don’t work around trademarks so I won’t comment there.
Not necessarily “longer and longer.” It’s varied between 14 and 21 years, and currently stands at 20 years; or if it takes too long to examine, 17 years post allowance date. And ownership could be transferred since 1952. It also established the ability to reject things for “obviousness.”
Now if you want to get to the root of the problems with the patent system, it’s the Federal Circuit Appeals Court that made many rulings in favor of patent holders versus what happened prior to the 1982 changes.