RE: KPA Paramilitary Railroad Units, Part 3

["Maxwell, David S. LTC" <maxwelld@sockor.korea.army.mil>]

Amazon.com will print any review on their web site.

David S. Maxwell
LTC, US Army
SOCKOR SOJ5
Unit #15622
APO AP 96205-0328
DSN 315-723-5649
NIPRNET: maxwelld@sockor.korea.army.mil
SIPRNET: okj5dmax@hqsockor.sockor.socom.smil.mil
Personal Email: max161@aol.com or max161@hushmail.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Cfbernard@aol.com [SMTP:Cfbernard@aol.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, April 26, 2000 09:35
> To:	KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ukans.edu
> Subject:	Re: KPA Paramilitary Railroad Units, Part 3
> 
> Joe,
> 
> You need read Weintraub's just issued MacArthur's War.  I'll paste my sort
> of 
> review, comment really on to this.  This reaction comes from your comment
> on 
> the successful Inchon landing.
> 
> Best
> 
> Carl Bernard
> 
> 
> Stanley Weintraub
> 
> Thank you for this very successful effort. My comments are personal
> reactions 
> to your words.  My exposure to General Douglas MacArthur began with
> reading 
> of his exploits and statements during WWII.  It was tempered a bit by the 
> Marine Corps' attempts to keep their own place in the sun.  Typical: "With
> 
> the help of God (and a few Marines) MacArthur got back to the
> Philippines."  
> My clerk's job in the headquarters of the 7th Marines in Hopei Province in
> 
> North China stuck many things about him in my mind.  Going back to Japan
> in 
> 1949 made him the big chief, hence in the consciousness of all of us.
> Korea 
> was disconcerting to any soldier as innocent as me.
> 
> And this intellectual baggage is what I carried during all my military 
> service, particularly in Laos and Vietnam.  My positive reaction to your 
> discussion of the first ten months of Korea owes much to reflections that
> had 
> never left me tranquil.  A neighbor wants me to send this to Amazon.com.
> he 
> believes they publish such varied material that my personal reaction, 
> certainly not a review will balance their other comments.  Do you have any
> 
> doubts about this?  Another wants to send what I've said to the review at 
> West Point.  Reservations?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Carl Bernard 
> 
> 
> 
> MACARTHUR'S WAR, Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero 
> by Stanley Weintraub
> 
> 
> Vietnam happened, in large part, because we learned the wrong lessons from
> 
> Korea. The enormous human, social and monetary costs of those two 
> misadventures demand that we never again commit the same errors. What 
> missteps allowed those disasters to ambush us? Ignoring history is often 
> proclaimed to be the certain way to repeat it. Misunderstanding history
> will 
> have the same effect. Weintraub's contribution may enable us to hear what 
> history has long been screaming at us by clearly showing how General 
> MacArthur wasted his resources and ruined his own reputation. Will such 
> inanities recur? MacArthur's primary advisors in Korea-Ignorance,
> Innocence 
> and Arrogance-are Siamese triplets who still decree repeated military 
> blunders. The mere passage of time (fifty years now!) does not cure folly,
> as 
> Somalia and Kosovo demonstrate. 
> 
> An unconscious betrayal of MacArthur by the uniformed sycophants
> cultivated 
> by and attracted to him, was almost inevitable. Few persons had the
> courage, 
> conviction or capability to contest the hasty, illogical decisions made by
> 
> the Army's famous five-star general. That obviated any application of a 
> Hegelian process to ameliorate or even validate MacArthur's hasty
> decisions. 
> Moreover, MacArthur's ego, bolstered by his demonstrated potency during 
> W.W.II, forbade his stooping to serious consideration of advice or counsel
> 
> from underlings. Pity. A reasoned examination of his extemporaneous 
> directives in Korea could have prevented the loss of many young soldiers.
> 
> In the five years between W.W.II and the North Korean attack on the South,
> 
> our military had become seriously unprepared to manage exigent events. The
> 
> War was over! Focused on peace, we were disarming. Our intelligence
> services 
> were woefully ignorant of the plans and ambitions of other governments.
> They 
> were far more concerned with Soviet activities than anything in Asia, thus
> 
> made little effort to trace policy evolutions in the two Koreas and China.
> 
> Had they better assessed the behavior of those countries, it is still 
> unlikely that they could have conveyed its significance to policy makers
> in 
> Washington or Tokyo. Senator Joseph McCarthy's shocking accusations early
> in 
> February, 1950, significantly disrupted the State Department as well as 
> Congress, and absorbed their attention from the events that led to open 
> hostilities in Korea five months later. McCarthy's charges had much
> greater 
> consequences than the reduction of knowledgeable Asian specialists. The 
> courage of many persons at policy levels sank noticeably when they noticed
> 
> the Senator had turned his attention toward them. 
> 
> Merely innocent within the American public, but dangerously ignorant at
> high 
> military and political levels, a general attitude prevailed that future 
> conflicts would certainly be fought with nuclear weapons. We believed that
> 
> awe of our massive nuclear superiority would hold most aggressive nations
> in 
> check. Further, the Army chiefs assumed that the psychological and 
> operational impact of the two nuclear weapons we had used earlier, and the
> 
> more than 300 others available to us, trivialized any offensive threat of 
> only ten in the Soviet's possession. Most deplorable, the Army chiefs 
> accepted that infantry fighting skills developed during W.W.II were made 
> irrelevant by nuclear weapons. 
> 
> This unexamined acceptance of a nuclear weapon defense was extended to an 
> excessive confidence in our air power, despite its failures in W.W.II. 
> (Hollywood, intending to promote preteen movie attendance, unconsciously 
> prompted an unwarranted faith in aircraft by portraying them in B-movies
> as 
> invincible. Lesson yet to be learned: Ban movie producers from the
> Pentagon.) 
> Contrarily, our reorientation to nuclear and air warfare gave low priority
> to 
> the readiness of infantry units. This, and a lamentable personnel policy
> that 
> readily transferred individuals from unit to unit before they became well 
> acquainted with one another, or even with their jobs, made the tragic fate
> of 
> my first unit, Task Force Smith, understandable. One shameful aspect of
> this: 
> our Army adopted General Sullivan's "No More Task Force Smith's" as a
> motto 
> and then did nothing to eliminate the chronic causes of such calamities.
> 
> Now, half century after Korea, we are still preparing to refight W.W.II. 
> Compounding the errors in Korea, Vietnam and all the other failed military
> 
> escapades since, the highest ranks of our military still pattern their 
> strategy after forms developed in W.W.II. None of the engagements since
> that 
> time have been nuclear. None are analogous to Pacific island hopping or 
> European air warfare. We have paid scant attention to covert "peoples'
> war" 
> even though this is likely to be the form of conflict most common in 
> tomorrow's world. t 
> 
> Other lessons to be learned from MacArthur's War:
> 
> · Washington and FECOM (Far Eastern Command) suspected the Soviets were 
> trying to get us committed in an area extraneous to our (and their) real 
> interest-Europe. They succeeded in swaying our highest commands because it
> 
> justified what we wanted to believe. Our focus on Europe obscured our 
> ignorance about the reality and significance of U.S./Chinese relations,
> thus 
> insuring that critical problems we faced would be ignored.
> 
> · We failed to understand our personnel failures from W.W.II (see
> Stouffer's 
> The American Soldier), causing far higher than necessary casualties in
> Korea 
> (and succeeding conflicts) as a consequence. 
> 
> · We were hobbled by our "Bible Belt" mentality, i.e. "GOD is on our
> side." 
> Under this perspective the existence of "evil kummunism" becomes proof
> (not 
> mere evidence) of an active devil, boosting our natural belief in the 
> justness of our cause.
> 
> · U.S. military staff officers distrusted Syngman Rhee with a passion 
> bordering on racism. That led to a pre-hostilities policy of keeping 
> essential "offensive" weapons from him. Perhaps this kept Rhee from 
> initiating attacks, but it guaranteed the failure of South Korea's
> response 
> to the initial North Korean assault, a defeat that sapped SK morale during
> 
> the entire "Police Action."
> 
> · Our near total unawareness of the Chinese Army's provisions for attack
> was 
> an unacceptable intelligence gaffe far superseding the naivete that
> pervaded 
> most of our data gathering. We ignored what little we knew about the 
> psychological integration and arming of veteran forces captured from
> Chiang, 
> i.e., "speak bitterness" and "auto critique" programs (techniques we
> usually 
> refer to as "brainwashing"). American intelligence also discounted the 
> possibility of Chinese intervention in Korea despite the Chinese alert of 
> their intentions to the Indians.
> · 
> ·  The inability of JCS to confront/control MacArthur before Inchon, and 
> their abject obeisance to his perceptions and intentions afterward, 
> demonstrate clearly that the selection process for staff officers
> (seniority) 
> had failed.
> · 
> · Despite Ridgway's best efforts, command of the 10th Corps from the Dai
> Ichi 
> building-resulting in the continued division of our committed
> forces-lasted 
> until MacArthur's actual departure.
> · 
> · The Army's attempts to control the media's reportage of happenings in
> the 
> field were unsuccessful.
> 
> · At the Wake Island conference with President Truman, MacArthur misled
> the 
> President in several areas, including the potential effectiveness of a 
> Chinese intervention in the war. His prognosis for success: "It will be
> over 
> by Thanksgiving."
> 
> · The UN (illogically, then) called for reunification of the two Koreas 
> despite the paucity of forces available for this. The upcoming meeting of 
> their two chiefs fifty years later (June 12-14, 2000) may be different.
> 
> · Chiang Kai Shek's blunders certainly led to his defeat by Mao Zedong's 
> army, but the psychological, military, and political strength of the Red
> Army 
> should not have been discounted. They had beaten the Nationalist forces,
> as 
> they would do with us north of the 38th parallel.
> 
> · Our projection of the "Fulda Gap" mentality to Vietnam points up our
> lack 
> of intellectual preparation for both. Korea, only 5 years after W.W.II,
> was 
> strikingly different from that conflict. Vietnam was a quantum leap from
> both 
> previous wars. We seem not to have learned that we must depart from the 
> strategies and tactics that served earlier. Covert "Peoples' Wars" require
> 
> altogether different methodologies.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>