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It will definitely go down as one of the biggest failures of mankind. Especially since it was so easily preventable if MacArthur was permitted to just take the
by VWWHFSfQ 10mo ago
It will definitely go down as one of the biggest failures of mankind. Especially since it was so easily preventable if MacArthur was permitted to just take the whole peninsula.
- antonymoose 10mo agoThink how many tens of millions could have been saved if we had ended the Soviet Union as Churchill advocated, before the world got nukes.
- denkmoon 10mo agoThink how many tens of millions would have died in such a war. Just for some other evil to pop up anyway.
- etc-hosts 10mo agoYou mean when Churchill wanted to hire 100,000 "former" Nazis to invade the Soviet Union?
- TheBicPen 10mo agoDoes any serious historian believe that fully defeating the Soviet Union after WWII would have been possible? Even with the advantage of nuclear weapons, I doubt the US would have made it very far.
- temp8830 10mo agoGrow an "ender" first. And when you do try - keep in mind that many tried before you. The Swedes. The French. The Germans. They all got their comeuppance, and so will you.
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- timschmidt 10mo agoChina was already sending troops and material to the front lines when MacArthur was ordered to stand down. Pushing further would have meant a hot war with China.
- petcat 10mo agoA hot war with China in 1950 was going to end quickly with the firepower USA had on-hand.
- timschmidt 10mo agoThere is no way we could match them in numbers on the ground. Such a conflict would have inevitably led to us nuking them as a result. Which is probably the reason decision makers chose not to.
- petcat 10mo agoAnd maybe that's really the humanitarian failure. That USA didn't nuke China in 1950 or 1951. Would have solved a lot of problems for generations of people.
- yongjik 10mo agoWow, just half a dozen comments from why we're not saving North Koreans to "we could've nuked China and solved a lot of problems." Some Hacker News threads are on their own level.
- etc-hosts 10mo agoYou know the US destroyed nearly 75 percent of all buildings in North Korea during the Korean War, right? NK is paranoid for very valid reasons.
- AngryData 10mo agoOr how about us not blowing them to bits in the first place? South Korea was on the very edge of capitulation before the US came in full force and even most South Korean citizens were in support of Korean unification at that time. The current state of North Korea would have never come to reality if they hadn't been blown to bits by the US because of big ol' scary "communism".
- jojobas 10mo agoSo, piecemeal cede every bit of land to the evil? Like Trump wants with Ukraine now? If you exclude the outliers like Campuchia and Nazi Germany, even the most benign commies are always way more deadly than the most ferocious fascists.
- AngryData 10mo agoWhat makes 1950s Korea evil? You are equating North Korea today with Korea of 75 years ago, they aren't even remotely similar. You don't think your nation getting bombed to literal fields of rubble wouldn't change views and political stances afterwards? Unification was supported by both sides among the people, most South Koreans supported communism and 70% of them supported unification with the North. South Koreans didn't even support their own government, they were dealing with internal insurrection from their own people. The North was an industrialized nation and the South was a poor farming country and their unification would of been hugely beneficial to both. The war would have been over in another 2 weeks without intervention and a minimal amount of casualties, and it had only been 3 months from the start of the invasion. The only people not in support of it at the time was the political leaders of SK at the time because it meant they personally as individuals would lose power and wealth, and the US who was on a crusade to crush and kill anybody who dared support communism. Korea never should have been split in the first place, but the US and USSR had to be little bitches and force their will upon these people. Killing 5 million people, most of which were innocent civilians, in the name of "fighting communism" is evil, not the idea of a unified nation of people supported by those same people.
- nl 10mo ago