The Redhunter

But before we get to that war, let's talk a bit about Korea.

My point here, btw, is not to go after Senator Webb. Both he and the President gave pretty good speeches the other night. As you may guess I thought the President did better, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

Back to Korea. If you're not sure why the Korean War was viewed as a fiasco at the time, you can start with Task Force Smith and the Chosin Reservoir.

Our initial justificatioin for fighting the North Korean invasion was to simply preserve the integrity of the South. However, after we successfully turned the tide with the invasion of Inchon, President Truman changed his war goals and decided to liberate the entire peninsula. General MacArthur dismissed warnings that the Chinese would intervene if he got too close to their border. As we know, the Chinese did intervene in a massive invasion that inflicted tremendous casualties on US forces and drove us completely out of the north. A stalemate ensued that was only ended when newly elected President Eisenhower negotiated an armistice (not a peace treaty) with the Chinese and North Koreans.

We were so traumatized by the Chinese intervention that during the Vietnam War 15 years later we imposed strict requirements on our pilots when they attacked targets in the north. At the time, we saw the lesson of Korea as "don't piss off the Chinese or Russians or they'll intervene and cause a wider war".

Yet as the article from the Times points out, South Korea is a stable democracy today and generally a very good ally. Sure, we've got some current disagreements over policy with regard to the north (see "Sunshine Policy"), but all-in-all it's hard to find anyone today who doesn't think the Korean War was worth it. However, at the time Truman was much-criticized for it.

Another War

One-hundred forty-odd years ago the United States fought another war that was, at times, deeply unpopular. It was said to be an unnecessary war, one that could have been resolved by negotiation, the President was accused of changing his goals halfway through it, and of massively violating our civil rights. Further, the war was conducted incompetently and the reconstruction period afterwards solved nothing. The oppressed people it was supposed to benefit didn't get their rights for another hundred years.

I write, of course, of the American Civil War. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, probably illegally. While he initially justified the war simply to preserve the union, after the battle of Antietam he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, effectively introducing abolution as a justification and war goal. The Emancipation Proclamation was very controversial in the North, with some troops even threatening desertion over it.

Some Democrats in the North became almost violently anti-war. They became known as "Copperheads".

By 1863 and early 1864 the war was going very poorly for the North. The Federal Army was unable to meet it's recruiting goals, which led to the imposition of a draft. The draft proved so unpopular that riots in New York City broke out over it.

Because of these and battlefield setbacks, the war opponents gained much strength. They were able to take over the Democrat party to the extent that the Democrat Party Platform for the 1864 presidential elections demanded "that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities" and a negotiated peace with the South.

Of course, the North won and the Union was restored. But the Reconstruction period that followed was marred by political disputes up North, the long and short of it being that it ended in 1877 without the civil rights of blacks being assured. With the imposition of Jim Crow, a visitor to the South in the 1920s or 30s might be forgiven for wondering if in fact the Civil War achieved anything at all.

How We View History

Maybe I'm all wet, but it is my perception that the way we view events like the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War II is that "we were all in it together" fighting for a glorious cause. Because the Korean War is more recent, I think many people have at least some inkling of the controversies involved, at least that of the insubordination of General MacArthur.

But when I go back and read the history of these events, what amazes me is how much we fought with each other. The colonialists seemed to spend as much time bickering with each other as they did fighting the British. When you read about how the New Englanders opposed the selection of George Washington to lead the Continental Army soley because he was a Virginian, and they wanted "their man" in charge, you just want to go back in history and scream at them. And this is not to mention that only about 1/3 of the colonists even supported revolution. But this is how history works, I think.

So here we are today with the current situation in Iraq. I've made no secret of both my disappointment with how President Bush has done in handling it and the larger War on Jihad, but right now I'm even more disappointed by the anti-war crowd.

Laying that aside for the moment, we need to realize that wars that are seen as obviously necessary today were often quite controvesial at the time.