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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - November 30, 2010
Why Are We Still in Korea?
by: Pat Buchanan
This writer was 11 years old when the shocking news came
on June 25, 1950, that North Korean armies had crossed the
DMZ.
Within days, Seoul had fallen. Routed U.S. and Republic
of Korea troops were retreating toward an enclave in the
southeast corner of the peninsula that came to be known
as the Pusan perimeter.
In September came Gen. MacArthur's masterstroke: the Marine
landing at Inchon behind enemy lines, the cut-off and
collapse of the North Korean Army, recapture of Seoul and
the march to the Yalu.
"Home by Christmas!" we were all saying.
Then came the mass intervention of a million "volunteers"
of the People's Liberation Army that had, in October 1949,
won the civil war against our Nationalist Chinese allies.
Suddenly, the U.S. Army and Marines were in headlong
retreat south. Seoul fell a second time.
There followed a war of attrition, the firing of MacArthur,
the repudiation of Harry Truman and his "no-win war," the
election of Ike and, in June 1953, an armistice along
the DMZ where the war began.
Fifty-seven years after that armistice, a U.S. carrier task
force is steaming toward the Yellow Sea in a show of force
after the North fired 80 shells into a South Korean
village.
We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama.
And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in
South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why,
60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be
the first to die in a second Korean War?
Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony
of Japan. She is the largest of all the "Asian tigers," a
nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy
of the North.
Seoul just hosted the G-20. And there is no Maoist China
or Stalinist Soviet Union equipping Pyongyang's armies.
The planes, guns, tanks and ships of the South are far
superior in quality.
Why, then, are we still in South Korea? Why is this quarrel
our quarrel? Why is this war, should it come, America's
war?
High among the reasons we fought in Korea was Japan, then
a nation rising from the ashes after half its cities had
been reduced to rubble. But, for 50 years now, Japan has
had the second largest economy and is among the most
advanced nations on earth.
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Why cannot Japan defend herself? Why does this remain our
responsibility, 65 years after MacArthur took the surrender
in Tokyo Bay?
The Soviet Empire, against which we defended Japan, no
longer exists, nor does the Soviet Union. Russia holds
the southern Kurils, taken as spoils from World War II,
but represents no threat. Indeed, Tokyo is helping develop
Russia's resources in Siberia.
Why, when the Cold War has been over for 20 years, do all
these Cold War alliances still exist?
Obama has just returned from a Lisbon summit of NATO, an
alliance formed in 1949 to defend Western Europe from
Soviet tank armies on the other side of the Iron Curtain
that threatened to roll to the Channel. Today, that Red
Army no longer exists, the captive nations are free, and
Russia's president was in Lisbon as an honored guest of
NATO.
Yet we still have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in
the same bases they were in when Gen. Eisenhower became
supreme allied commander more than 60 years ago.
Across Europe, our NATO allies are slashing defense to
maintain social safety nets. But Uncle Sam, he soldiers
on.
We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from
Japan and China to defend Japan from China. We borrow
from the Gulf Arabs to defend the Gulf Arabs.
To broker peace in Palestine, Obama began his presidency
with a demand that Israel halt all new construction of
settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Today, as his price for a one-time-only 90-day freeze on
new construction on the West Bank, but not East Jerusalem,
"Bibi" Netanyahu is demanding 20 F-35 strike fighters,
a U.S. commitment to a Security Council veto of any
Palestinian declaration of independence, and assurances
the U.S. will support a permanent Israeli presence on the
Jordan river. And the Israelis want it all in writing.
This, from a client state upon which we have lavished a
hundred billion dollars in military aid and defended
diplomatically for decades.
How to explain why America behaves as she does?
From 1941 to 1989, she played a great heroic role as
defender of freedom, sacrificing and serving mankind,
a role of which we can be forever proud. But having
won that epochal struggle against the evil empire, we
found ourselves in a world for which we were unprepared.
Now, like an aging athlete, we keep trying to relive the
glory days when all the world looked with awe upon us.
We can't let go, because we don't know what else to do. We
live in yesterday -- and our rivals look to tomorrow.
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