Somali pirates

The holidays call- I will look into the issue and see if I can sus out the position presented in the documentary I watched.

Just a quick look & I see that 5.4 million US troops served in the conflict, the Chinese entered after the UN forces had recrossed the 38th parallel.

I believe the documentary was focusing on the initial rout down the peninsula. This occurred before the Chinese had entered and at a time when relative troop levels were not at a great disparity.
Again- I will take some time today and sus it out.

 

Review Douglas MacArther for Korean insight.

http://b-29s-over-korea.com/General_MacArthur/index.html

 

I don't have time right now to review that site; I'm on my way to bed. But I know this: MacArthur sat on his butt in Japan and tried to run the Korean War by remote control, without ever setting foot in the war zone.

He also tried to tell President Truman that he, and not the President, had the final word on whether nuclear weapons would be used in the conflict. Apparently he never read Article 2 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."

MacArthur's idea was to create a radioactive zone across Korea, as a barrier to stop the Chinese. I'm sure the South Koreans loved him for his willingness to save them by poisoning hundreds or thousands of square miles of their country...

 

And Truman fired him. Previously, FDR also had to "reign" in Mac.
IMHO occupation is costly, difficult to supply, and makes your forces and installations, TARGETS.
Better to hit and run. Our Seals, Rangers, and Marine Recon special forces are excellent at it. Worked well back in revolutionary war against Britain. Why do we bother with any other tactic?

 

I like this approach. Minimize our losses while maximizing theirs.

 

MacArthur did have his good points, though. He oversaw and guided the efforts of his staff members while they created the post-war Japanese Constitution in about a week, and it's been in effect for 65 years. Interestingly enough, they managed to write a document which was overwhelming approved by Japanese voters, instead of having to force it onto the country. Not a bad job, for a bunch of clueless Gaijin....

Depends on what your objectives are. Hit and run is fine, if all you want to do is harass or weaken the enemy, particularly if the fight is on your own turf. But you certainly can't invade and conquer someone else by using only unconventional warfare. Holding and controlling territory still takes boots on the ground.

Of course, then we get into the endless discussions about whether we should be trying to hold ground and control other people and areas...

 

Yes, he was pretty good as military governor, as Shoguns go.

 

True, to conquer takes boots on the ground. Conquering is an option for monarchs and Dictators. Dangerous for democracies, because the conquered become voting citizens. if you conquer too many peoples, you become a minority, and they take over the government. Then, who conquered who?

 

I don't know where you found the number 5.4 million; it's insanely high. For comparison, only about 8 million Americans served during the entire Second World War... I can't imagine 5 million of them tripping over each other in Korea.

Maybe you're mixing up your statistics? I believe there were roughly five million total deaths during the war, including about 10% of Korea's population.

 

Here is where I got the numbers- in what was really a quick sweep to see the disposition of forces:

"The UN force that went to Korea was the first-ever "international peace-keeping force." But although its ideology of peace and non-aggression seem very positive, the peacekeeping force was in this case actually an instrument of the US. Only 16 countries actually sent men on the mission, and most of these were NATO countries, which were hardly neutral when it came to Communists. And the majority of the troops by a good margin were American: while 5.7 million American troops would ultimately serve in the Korean War, only about 40,000 troops from the other UN Peace-Keeping nations were involved, and of these, half were British. In fact, the tiny non-American units actually tended to get in the way and confuse American planning more than they actually helped the war effort. Chiang Kai-Shek offered 35,000 Chinese Nationalist troops, but Truman and Acheson rejected this, afraid the involvement of Chinese Nationalists might provoke the involvement of the much larger Red Army of the PRC. Clearly, the UN forces were an instrument of US policy designed to give the appearance of international consensus rather than a truly autonomous international organization."
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/koreanwar/section4.rhtml

Other sources show 1,789,000

The issue of course is of deployed troops in any given engagement- on the UN side or the other..


You believe the Vietnam war was "un-winnable".
That may be true but the quote Hoyte brought in does evoke some historical commentary from Giap:

"The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion."

This statement does lend some credence to the cliche that the war was lost by stint of the country and its officials censuring action and changing policy goals during a conflict.
This leads me to the Korean conflict and the question over how the policy directives and reason for our engagement effected the outcome.

Thanks for indulging me as I stated from the start- this is a period for which my understanding is somewhat weak.

 

and I still stand by my guns - just blow the Somali pirates clean out of the water without exception - save everyone a lot of trouble and if this attitude is adapted by all victims or about to be victims of these pirate scum.
Keeping this up will scare the living daylights out of them and they will start to pursue new careers....

 

I agree. Get rid of the pirates. Not just Somali, but Nigeria and everywhere they exist.
A word to the wise to foreign bound yachtsmen. Under International law, a merchant vessel captain, and only he, is entitled to have aboard one pistol, or, one shot gun, and limited rounds for either.
Making a case that this applies to all private non military vessels maybe difficult for yachts.
But in all cases, do not carry more than one fire arm.
An armed merchantman is defacto a pirate under marine law. That's all the evidence they need to charge you with piracy, is carrying arms aboard.

 

I have had pirates attempt to board me numerous times, and once they managed to get aboard. Should I post that story here, or under sea stories thread?

 

It sounds far too many to me too.
Wiki says 302,000 (which, of course, needs corroboration)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war

 

I am looking to see if a copy of this paper can be found:

US Foreign Policy and the Korean War
Michael J. Nojeim

"Sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because Americans pay so little attention to it, the Korean War was nevertheless a pivotal event in US foreign policy. Three themes will be integrated into this article as it analyzes Korean War policy. First, the Korean War heightened the debates and divisions among US foreign policymakers. If Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor helped to silence these divisions, then President Truman’s handling of North Korea’s 1950 invasion of South Korea helped resurrect them. Second, while foreign policy goals are generally assumed to drive the objectives of war in the classic Clausewitzian sense, the opposite frequently occurred in Korea as changes on the battlefield drove policy objectives of officials in Washington. Third, although the Americans, Chinese and Soviets all worked assiduously to keep the Korean War limited to the Korean Peninsula, the war had repercussions far beyond the Korean battlefield. Its ramifications were felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, Europe and in US defense expenditures as well."