Lessons from the Korean War

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In Korea the U.S. learned the pitfalls of waging halfhearted war and making peace without victory. The lessons of Korea were vividly summed up last week when the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee published excerpts from the testimony, taken last year, of top Korean war military commanders who had bridled against costly interference by Washington.

General Omar Bradley called Korea "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." But this was not the opinion of the commanders who knew most about that war. Korea, said General James Van Fleet, "was the right war, at the right place, and the right time, against the right enemy and with the right allies." The Communists had a long, vulnerable supply line, he said, but the U.S. "had command of the water and the air...[and] unexcelled bases in Japan and Korea for redeployment...We had the tremendous skill of the Japanese industrial nation, employed as civilians...It could not possibly be made or altered any better." Admiral Charles Turner Joy, agreeing, added: "The Navy could not have fought in a more favorable distant area."

Overruled. But the U.S., failing to press home its advantages, made error upon critical error, according to the witnesses. The day Chinese "volunteers" swarmed across the Yalu, testified General Mark Clark, "we should have indicated that we were at war with Red China." Attacking Manchurian bases, however, might have triggered a world war. "It might have," said Clark, with Joy concurring. "I do not think it would have...I do not think you can drag the Soviets into a world war except at a time and place of their own choosing. They have been doiqg^too well in the cold war."

As chief of the U.N. truce-talk delegation. Turner Joy had been most bitter about Washington's order to accept a November 1951 Communist proposal to fix the battleline at that time as an armistice line. This, he said, "would constitute an immediate cease-fire on the basis of agreement on one item only of the agenda. Thus, the Communists would be insured against effects of future military operations while other agenda items were being discussed...General Ridgway strongly requested reconsideration of Washington's instructions."

Washington merely directed "early action"on a settlement, with one condition : that the Communists agree to the other agenda items within one month. Said Admiral Joy: "It was accepted by them with obvious relief...It was a serious mistake." Instead of one month, it took 20 months to get an armistice.

Unanswered. Lieut. General Edward M. Almond, who led the X Corps from the Inchon landing to the Chosin reservoir, estimated that victory could have been had in 1951 at the price of only 30,000 casualties, whereas subsequent casualties during the truce talks numbered 52,000.

Instead of victory, what did the truce yield? "We left an enemy on the 38th parallel, right where he started." lamented Clark. "True, we had stopped his immediate aggression to take over South Korea, but we left him there better trained...We left him there arrogant. He had made the people behind the Iron Curtain think that he had won a victory, and we left him ready and poised to strike again, as he did in Indo-China."

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