Down Goes Cassius, Down Goes Cassius, Down Goes Cassius

[Cornhusker]

Loved watching him fight in the 60's & 70's.
My Dad was anything but a fan being a WWII Marine Vet, so I had to keep my mouth shut concerning Cassius.
My brother wasn't a fan either serving 3 tours in 'Nam.. (Don't even mention Hanoi (the bitch) Jane to him.)

tps://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/muhammad-ali- ... 02069.html

[The Big Pickle]

Before Mohamid Ali the black athletes were at least humble. Jackie Robinson, Jessie Owens etc..etc.. they acted respectful and with class. Then along comes loud mouth abrasive monkey ali...thumping his chest like a silverback gorilla, yelling at the top of his lungs that he's the greatest. Yapping flapping lips with second grade rhymns. Ali was the original black trash talking unsportsman ape. He is the reason every black person that scores a basket or gets a first down has to announce to the world that "he done good!"

Personally, I'm glad he's gone. I hope he enjoys monkey heaven because he sure as hell ain't in Human Heaven.

[BSmack]

I'd hardly call a man who knowingly risked imprisonment for a moral stand that offered him no possible gain a "dodger."

[Wolfman]

He could have gone the route of Joe Louis. Joe did a lot to help morale with his exhibitions while serving his country. Yes, the country that gave him the opportunity to rise above it all. Would have given him great honor among the folks who did serve. I also respect Elvis, Ted Williams, and many others for their service. Too bad Ali/Clay wasted that.

[Shoalzie]

He took an unpopular stand but he took a stand. It wasn't to the level sacrifice of Pat Tillman walking away from a pro career to risk his life. Ali was willing to walk away in his prime to take a real stand for something he didn't think was right. And at a time when his race was fighting for equal rights.

I don't see a lot of brave athletes today willing to give up their cushy lives to take a real stand. Athletes today think a hashtag or wearing a t-shirt is an actual stance.

[Diego in Seattle]

Funny how No one adds Draft Dodger to his list of accomplishments....

Perhaps Donald tRump can weigh in on this...

[Screw_Michigan]

Funny how No one adds Draft Dodger to his list of accomplishments....

Perhaps Donald tRump can weigh in on this...

And isn't Scrote the #1 Trumpster? Oh, the irony is indeed fucking rich.

[BSmack]

He could have gone the route of Joe Louis.

He could have. He would have been better off financially. He wouldn't have faced prison. And he would have been just another great boxer and you might have even felt comfortable rooting for him. Instead he acted on his beliefs, damn the consequences to his career.

[LTS TRN 2]

Ali's stance and action against the Vietnam war was his most noble achievement. The war itself was a horrific war crime every bit as craven and evil as that of Nazi Germany. But his dreadful personal attacks on Joe Frazier preceding the great first fight were unforgivable and really reflect the character of a punk. As for his record in the ring, both Liston fights were suspect, and his best fight was losing to Frazier. He then lost (three times in many viewers eyes) to the musclebound journeyman, Norton. As for his trickery in beating Foreman, very clever indeed, though he would have as soon converted to Judaism as given Foreman a rematch.

[smackaholic]

Ali's stance and action against the Vietnam war was his most noble achievement. The war itself was a horrific war crime every bit as craven and evil as that of Nazi Germany. But his dreadful personal attacks on Joe Frazier preceding the great first fight were unforgivable and really reflect the character of a punk. As for his record in the ring, both Liston fights were suspect, and his best fight was losing to Frazier. He then lost (three times in many viewers eyes) to the musclebound journeyman, Norton. As for his trickery in beating Foreman, very clever indeed, though he would have as soon converted to Judaism as given Foreman a rematch.

Surprisingly enough, I agree with a fair bit of what lets turd says.

I didn't agree with his stance on Vietnam or his bullshit about making it into a racist thing. If I recall the other side was being backed by evil white folks as well. I do admire his principle though in sticking to his beliefs, passing up on a lot of good paydays. He was an arrogant cocksucker during his fighting days and that will never be cool. Prior to him coming along there was a thing called class. Ali was the first one to thumb his nose at class and it has been all downhill since. As for his skill level, hard to say, but, I believe had he been active for those three and a half years of his prime, nobody would have been able to touch him. His combination of size, speed, smarts and guts would have been hard to beat. By the time he resumed his career, he was getting close to 30. He was still damn good, but didn't have the blinding speed he had in 1965. I do believe that Ken Norton beat his ass. And yes, if big George had half the desire and smarts of Ali, he would have crushed him in a rematch. I do believe Ali would have given him one. Ali was too proud to duck him and would have appreciated a damn nice payday.

[BSmack]

[Screw_Michigan]

If I recall the other side was being backed by evil white folks as well.

Congrats on missing the point, numbnuts.

[The Big Pickle]

I think we can all agree that he was just a black guy with the fast twitch muscles of a cat and the strength of a silverback gorilla. He is famous because he was a LOUD mouth niqqeer that could box and the end result of his success is that every time we watch sports a black dude needs to brag to the nation that he done good.

End of story!

What's funny is that you all give a standing ovation to mvscal for saying the exact same thing, but when I say it, it's racist.

Fukkkk y'all!

[Alan]

Don't let these big bad meanies bully you, Stanley! I respect you!

Please come home, Stanley. I forgive you for leaving me for Tyrone. :|

[The Big Pickle]

Don't let these big bad meanies bully you, Stanley! I respect you!

Please come home, Stanley. I forgive you for leaving me for Tyrone. :|

Anybody that has a one trick troll from 2008 needs to die. Serously...just die!


You need to DIE! DIE! DIE!

DIE!

DIE!

DIE!

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

I don't see a lot of brave athletes today willing to give up their cushy lives to take a real stand.

He didn't really make a choice to give anything up. His options were to enlist or refuse induction and go to jail. He chose the latter and won his appeal.

[smackaholic]

If I recall the other side was being backed by evil white folks as well.

Congrats on missing the point, numbnuts.

And what would that be? We were in SE Asia because we believed that if we just sat on our thumbs, the Russkies would turn commie, every last nation in sight. Do you disagree with this? It was not about Americans subjugating more brown folk. Do you believe those little brown fukkers ended up better off when communism won that round? I suppose their neighbors in Cambodia were lucky too, as they were spared our imperialism and got Pol Pot instead. Yeah, all those fukkers made out soooo much better than say, the South Koreans, who actually were saved by us in the same manner. Yeah, those poor fukking Koreans, had we not subjugated them, they'd be so much better off, like their cousins to the North.

South Vietnam was in basically in the same position as South Korea. The main difference is the American public didn't sabotage that effort. Also, the Koreans did not have a long border on their flank like the S. Vietnamese did, which the commies used to their great advantage because our brain dead leaders wouldn't take that fight across this border.

[Screw_Michigan]

Again, you completely miss the point. See Bsuck's post.

[LTS TRN 2]

And what would that be? We were in SE Asia because we believed that if we just sat on our thumbs, the Russkies would turn commie, every last nation in sight. Do you disagree with this? It was not about Americans subjugating more brown folk. Do you believe those little brown fukkers ended up better off when communism won that round? I suppose their neighbors in Cambodia were lucky too, as they were spared our imperialism and got Pol Pot instead. Yeah, all those fukkers made out soooo much better than say, the South Koreans, who actually were saved by us in the same manner. Yeah, those poor fukking Koreans, had we not subjugated them, they'd be so much better off, like their cousins to the North.

South Vietnam was in basically in the same position as South Korea. The main difference is the American public didn't sabotage that effort. Also, the Koreans did not have a long border on their flank like the S. Vietnamese did, which the commies used to their great advantage because our brain dead leaders wouldn't take that fight across this border.

The the rise of the Khemer Rouge and subsequent carnage of Cambodia was a direct result of the U.S. illegally bombing it. As for the people of Vietnam, do you suppose they liked being a colonial vassal? What grotesque gibberish seems to fill your lard-filled lobes.

[BSmack]

Scott, the Viet Cong were not an existential treat to the US. Period. It wasn't, "ask what you can do for your country." Rather, young men were being forced to ask what they could do for the millitary industrial complex.

[smackaholic]

And what would that be? We were in SE Asia because we believed that if we just sat on our thumbs, the Russkies would turn commie, every last nation in sight. Do you disagree with this? It was not about Americans subjugating more brown folk. Do you believe those little brown fukkers ended up better off when communism won that round? I suppose their neighbors in Cambodia were lucky too, as they were spared our imperialism and got Pol Pot instead. Yeah, all those fukkers made out soooo much better than say, the South Koreans, who actually were saved by us in the same manner. Yeah, those poor fukking Koreans, had we not subjugated them, they'd be so much better off, like their cousins to the North.

South Vietnam was in basically in the same position as South Korea. The main difference is the American public didn't sabotage that effort. Also, the Koreans did not have a long border on their flank like the S. Vietnamese did, which the commies used to their great advantage because our brain dead leaders wouldn't take that fight across this border.

The the rise of the Khemer Rouge and subsequent carnage of Cambodia was a direct result of the U.S. illegally bombing it. As for the people of Vietnam, do you suppose they liked being a colonial vassal? What grotesque gibberish seems to fill your lard-filled lobes.

I'm sorry, I missed the part in history class where the US colonized Vietnam. I recall it was the frogs that did that. But, maybe you're right. The frenchies colonized canada before being runned and I don't see many Vietnamese in the NHL. So this means the french couldn't possibly have colonized them, right?

[BSmack]

And when the French got run out we came in and took up for their cause.

[smackaholic]

Scott, the Viet Cong were not an existential treat to the US. Period. It wasn't, "ask what you can do for your country." Rather, young men were being forced to ask what they could do for the millitary industrial complex.

This existential threat bullshit is getting really old.

No single war we have ever fought, since our first one against the brits, in and of its self was an "existential threat". We could have co-existed with the Nazis or Imperial Japan. Of course, in the case of WWII, we can at least go to the "he started it" card.

Are you saying that the only time to throw down with anyone is when the other guy gets to a point where he actually has the ability to take you out? That seems kind of dumb to me. We certainly don't need to jump into every skirmish on the planet, Afghanistan is the perfect example of "WTF are we doing here?" It is a barren worthless shithole populated by goat fukking primitives. Leave them to their goat fukking and poppy growing. SE Asia is somewhat different. They have a long coastline, which has benefits. They can actually grow shit there. And their people aren't as hopelessly fukked as the Afghans are. There actually could have been a benefit to us to having them look a little more like S. Korea than N. Korea. Unfortunately, LBJ and his minions turned it into a world class cluster-fukk pretty much out of the gate. And having a growing commie loving class back at home didn't help things much.

If we had used the "existential threat" litmus test over the past 70 years, I suspect the world looks a bit different. Europe would have been taken over completely by the Soviets, same with Korea and quite likely Japan. Same goes for the rest of the 2th, 3st and 4rd world.

If you think otherwise, you are a fukking moron.

[smackaholic]

And when the French got run out we came in and took up for their cause.

But not to colonize them. Believe it or not, there were a number of them who thought they western democracy thing might be a hoot, and they weren't big on the commies running them. All the monday morning quarterback libtards like to paint this as purely a civil war with no outside influence other than the US. It was not.

[Goober McTuber]

We could have co-existed with the Nazis or Imperial Japan.

We could have coexisted with Imperial Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor? Are you equating WWII to the "police action" in Vietnam? You are still the DMFOTI.

[smackaholic]

No, I am not equating them. I am saying that the "existential threat" litmus test for going to war is a bad one. Monday morning QBs can point to Vietnam as a colossal failure and something that we shouldn't have gotten into because they were not an existential threat and it is BS. As for imperial Japan being an existential threat, that is bullshit. They took a calculated risk and it blew up in their face, but at no time were they a threat to our existence. They wanted to dominate their region just as we did ours. To do so, they needed to do something to the 2 powers that were cockblocking them, the US and Britain. This is not to pass judgement on them, just to state facts. If you really do want to look at existential threats, take a look at the muzzles. They aren't a threat here yet, but they intend to be and they are well on their way to pwning Western Europe.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Goober McTuber]

We shouldn't have been in Vietnam. Period.

Ali got it right.

[smackaholic]

The question to you fukks remains.

Should we have gotten involved in Korea?

Should we have stuck our noses into any of the shitholes we did in Latin America?

Should we have occupied Western Europe on a massive scale? Something we continue to do, a 1/4 century after the alleged fall of communism?

[BSmack]

“The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles”

Eugene Debs

'holic,

Your questions assume that the master class has the right to compel the subject class to fight and die. Ali challenged that assumption. Rack Ali.

[Goober McTuber]

Yes.

Probably not.

Maybe.

[Goober McTuber]

Dismissed as the ‘forgotten war,’ Korea was in actuality one of America’s most significant conflicts. Although born of a misapprehension, the Korean War triggered the buildup of U.S. forces in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), began American involvement in the Vietnam War, and, although seen as an aberration at the time, now serves as the very model for America’s wars of the future.

One reason the importance of the Korean War is not better appreciated is that from the very start the conflict presented confusing and contradictory messages. Historian and Korean War combat veteran T.R. Fehrenbach wrote in his classic This Kind of War: ‘Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it, and wipe it clean of life–but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.’

Fehrenbach concluded: ‘By April 1951, the Eighth Army had again proven Erwin Rommel’s assertion that American troops knew less but learned faster than any fighting men he had opposed. The tragedy of American arms, however, is that having an imperfect sense of history, Americans sometimes forget as quickly as they learn.’ Those words proved to be only too true.

Two years later, as the war came to an end, Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter declared that ‘Korea was a unique, never-to-be-repeated diversion from the true course of strategic air power.’ For the next quarter century, nuclear weaponry dominated U.S. military strategy. As a result, General Maxwell D. Taylor, the Eighth Army’s last wartime commander (and later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War), complained that ‘there was no thoroughgoing analysis ever made of the lessons to be learned from Korea, and later policy makers proceeded to repeat many of the same mistakes.’

The most damning mistake those policy-makers made was to misjudge the true nature of the war. As Karl von Clausewitz, the renowned Prussian philosopher of war, wrote in 1832: ‘The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and the commander has to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking….This is the first of all strategic questions and the most important.’

As President Harry S. Truman’s June 27, 1950, war message makes evident, the U.S. assumption was that monolithic world communism, directed by Moscow, was behind the North Korean invasion. ‘The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt,’ said Truman, ‘that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.’

That belief, later revealed as false, had enormous and far-reaching consequences. Believing that Korea was a diversion and that the main attack would come in Europe, the United States began a major expansion of its NATO forces. From 81,000 soldiers and one infantry division stationed in Western Europe when the war started, by 1952 the U.S. presence had increased to six divisions–including the National Guard’s 28th and 43rd Infantry divisions–503 aircraft, 82 warships and 260,800 men, slightly more than the 238,600 soldiers then in combat in Korea.

Another critical action was the decision to become involved in Vietnam. In addition to ordering U.S. military forces to intervene in Korea, Truman directed ‘acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indo-China and the dispatch of a military mission to provide close working relations with those forces.’

On September 17, 1950, Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Indochina was formed, an organization that would grow to the half-million-strong Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) before U.S. involvement in that country came to an end almost a quarter century later. As in Korea, the notion that monolithic world communism was behind the struggle persisted until almost the very end.

The fact that such an assumption was belied by 2,000 years of Sino-Vietnamese hostility was ignored, and it was not until Richard Nixon’s diplomatic initiatives in 1970 that the United States became aware of, and began to exploit, the fissures in that so-called Communist monolith. By then it was too late, for the American people had long since given up on Vietnam.

The fact that the U.S. response to both the Korean War and the Vietnam War was built on the false perception of a Communist monolith began to emerge after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. At a July 1995 conference I attended at Georgetown University, Dr. Valeri Denissov, deputy director of the Asian Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, revealed the true nature of the Korean War’s origins.

Drawing from the hitherto secret documents of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Denissov revealed that far from being the instigator of the war, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin was at best a reluctant partner. In September 1949, the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party rejected an appeal from North Korea’s Kim Il Sung to assist in an invasion of the South. But in April 1950, says Denissov, Stalin changed his mind and agreed to provide assistance for an invasion of the South. For one thing, Kim had convinced Stalin that the invasion was a low-risk operation that could be successfully concluded before the United States could intervene.

‘Thus,’ said Denissov, ‘the documents existing in Russian archives prove that…it was Kim Il Sung who unleashed the war upon receiving before-hand blessings from Stalin and Mao Zedong [Mao Tse-tung].’

Why did Stalin change his mind? The first reason lay in Mao Tse-tung’s victory in the Chinese Third Civil War. Denissov asserted that ‘Stalin believed that after the U.S.A. deserted Chiang Kai-shek ‘to his own fortunes’ in the internal Chinese conflict they would not risk a participation in a Korean-Korean war as well.’ Another factor, Denissov believed, was that ‘the Soviet Union had declared the creation of its own nuclear bomb, which according to Stalin’s calculations deprived Americans of their nuclear monopoly and of their ability to use the ‘nuclear card’ in the confrontation with the Soviet Union.’

Another Russian Foreign Ministry official at the conference, Dr. Evgeny Bajanov, added yet another reason for Stalin’s change of heart–the ‘perceived weakness of Washington’s position and of its will to get involved militarily in Asia.’

That perception was well-founded. Dispatched to Korea at the end of World War II to disarm the Japanese there, the U.S. military was not too fond of the country from the start. When I arrived at the replacement depot at Yongdungpo in November 1947, our group was addressed by Lt. Gen. John R. Hodge, commander of the XXIV Corps and of U.S. forces in Korea. ‘There are only three things the troops in Japan are afraid of,’ he said. ‘They’re gonorrhea, diarrhea and Korea. And you’ve got the last one.’

After a year with the 6th Infantry Division in Pusan–a time spent mostly confined to barracks because of the civil unrest then sweeping the country–I was only too glad to see the division deactivated in December 1948 and myself transferred to the 24th Infantry Division in Japan. In 1949, the 7th Infantry Division, the only remaining U.S. combat unit in Korea, was also transferred to Japan, leaving only the several hundred men of the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG).

‘In Moscow,’ Denissov said, ‘American military presence in South Korea in 1945-1949 was viewed as a ‘deterring factor’ which became defunct after America’s withdrawal from the South.’ Yet another sign of lack of American will was Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s public statement in January 1950 that Korea was outside the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia. Finally, Moscow must have been well aware of the drastic cuts made in America’s defenses by the false economies of Truman and Louis Johnson, his feckless secretary of defense.

While Stalin’s and Kim Il Sung’s perceptions of U.S. lack of resolve may have been well-founded, they were also wrong. During a Pentagon briefing in 1974, General Vernon Walters, then deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was asked about the unpredictability of U.S. reaction. ‘If a Soviet KGB spy had broken into the Pentagon or the State Department on June 25, 1950, and gained access to our most secret files,’ Walters said, ‘he would have found the U.S. had no interest at all in Korea. But the one place he couldn’t break into was the mind of Harry Truman, and two days later America went to war over Korea.’

In taking the United States to war in Korea, Truman made two critical decisions that would shape future military actions. First, he decided to fight the war under the auspices of the United Nations, a pattern followed by President George Bush in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and, currently, by President Bill Clinton in Bosnia. Second, for the first time in American military history, Truman decided to take the nation to war without first asking Congress for a declaration of war. Using the U.N. Security Council resolution as his authority, he said the conflict in Korea was not a war but a ‘police action.’

With the Soviet Union then boycotting the U.N. Security Council, the United States was able to gain approval of U.N. resolutions labeling the North Korean invasion a ‘breach of the peace’ and urging all members to aid South Korea.

The United States was named executive agent for the conduct of the war, and on July 10, 1950, Truman appointed General of the Army Douglas MacArthur as commander in chief of the U.N. Command. In reality, however, the U.N. involvement was a facade for unilateral U.S. action to protect its vital interests in northeast Asia. The U.N. Command was just another name for MacArthur’s Far East Command in Tokyo.

At its peak strength in July 1953, the U.N. Command stood at 932,539 ground forces. Republic of Korea (ROK) army and marine forces accounted for 590,911 of that force, and U.S. Army and Marine forces for another 302,483. By comparison, other U.N. ground forces totaled some 39,145 men, 24,085 of whom were provided by British Commonwealth Forces (Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and 5,455 of whom came from Turkey.

While the U.N. facade was a harmless delusion, Truman’s decision not to seek a declaration of war set a dangerous precedent. Claiming their war making authority rested in their power as commanders in chief, both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon refused to ask Congress for approval to wage war in Vietnam, a major factor in undermining support for that conflict. It was not until the Gulf War in 1991 that then President Bush rejected suggestions that he follow the Korean precedent and instead, as the Constitution provides, asked Congress for permission to wage war.

All those political machinations, however, were far from the minds of those of us then on occupation duty in Japan. We were as surprised as Stalin and Kim Il Sung at Truman’s orders to go into action in Korea. For one thing, we were far from ready. I was then a corporal with the 24th Infantry Division’s heavy tank battalion, only one company of which was activated–and that unit was equipped not with heavy tanks but with M-24 Chaffee light reconnaissance tanks, armed with low-velocity 75mm guns, that proved to be no match for the North Koreans’ Soviet-supplied T-34 85mm-gun medium tanks.

Also inadequate were the infantry’s 2.36-inch anti-tank rocket launchers. Radios did not work properly, and we were critically short of spare parts. Instead of the usual three rifle battalions, the infantry regiments had only two. And our field artillery battalions had only two of their three authorized firing batteries. Although our officers and sergeants were mostly World War II combat veterans, we were truly a ‘hollow force.’

The 24th Infantry Division was the first U.S. ground combat unit committed to the war, with its initial elements landing in Korea on July 1, 1950. We soon found ourselves outgunned by the advancing North Korean People’s Army (NKPA). All of our tanks were lost to the NKPA T-34s, and our commander was killed for want of a starter solenoid on our tank retriever. Going into action with some 16,000 soldiers, the 24th Division had only 8,660 men left by the time it was relieved by the 1st Cavalry Division on July 22.

The shock of those initial disasters still reverberates throughout the U.S. Army more than four decades later. After the end of the Cold War in 1991, the watchwords of Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan were ‘Remember Task Force Smith,’ a warning not to let the Army again become the hollow force of 1950 that paid in blood for America’s unpreparedness.

Task Force Smith was the first of the 24th Infantry Division’s units to be committed. Named after its commander, Lt. Col. Charles B. ‘Brad’ Smith, the task force consisted of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, and ‘A’ Battery, 52nd Field Artillery Battalion. The task force came under attack by the infantry columns of the NKPA 4th Infantry Division and the T-34s of the 209th Armored Brigade at Osan on July 5, 1950. Outnumbered and unable to stop the NKPA tanks, it was forced to fall back toward Taejon. There, the remainder of the 24th Infantry Division made a stand until July 20, before being pushed back into the Naktong Perimeter–losing the commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Dean (captured by the NKPA), in the process. Although at a terrible price, it had bought time for the remainder of the Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) to move from Japan to Korea. Contrary to Kim Il Sung’s calculations, America had been able to intervene in time. North Korea’s attempt to conquer South Korea in one lightning stroke had been thwarted.

Wars are fought on three interconnected levels. At first, the United States was on the operational (i.e., theater of war) and tactical (i.e., battlefield) defensive, but at the strategic (i.e., national policy) level, it was still pursuing the same policy of ‘rollback and liberation’ that it had followed in earlier wars. That policy called for temporarily going on the defensive to buy time to prepare for a strategic offensive that would carry the war to the enemy in order to destroy his will to resist.

While EUSA held the Naktong River line against a series of North Korean assaults, General MacArthur laid plans to assume the strategic, operational and tactical offensive with a landing behind enemy lines at Inchon.

In a brilliant strategic maneuver, MacArthur sent his X Corps ashore on September 15, 1950. Consisting of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division and the Marine 1st Division, it rapidly cut the enemy’s lines of supply and communication to its forces besieging the Naktong Perimeter to the south, forcing them to withdraw in disarray. While X Corps pressed on to recapture Seoul, South Korea’s capital city, EUSA broke out of the Naktong Perimeter and linked up with X Corps near Osan on September 26. Seoul fell the next day.

‘After the Inchon landing,’ Secretary of State Acheson told the Senate in May 1951, ‘General MacArthur called on these North Koreans to turn in their arms and cease their efforts; that they refused to do, and they retired into the North, and what General MacArthur’s military mission was, was to pursue them and round them up [and] we had the highest hopes that when you did that the whole of Korea would be unified.’

On Korea’s western coast, EUSA crossed the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea and captured the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on October 19, 1950. EUSA continued to drive north against light opposition, and on November 1, 1950, it reached its high-water mark when the village of Chongdo-do, 18 air miles from the Yalu River separating Korea and the Chinese province of Manchuria, was captured by the 21st Infantry Regiment.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, X Corps had moved into northeastern Korea. The 1st Marine Division occupied positions around the Chosin Reservoir, while on November 21, elements of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division’s 17th Infantry Regiment reached the Yalu River near its source at Hyesanjin in eastern Korea. It seemed as though the war was over.

But disaster was at hand. On October 4, 1950, Chairman Mao Tse-tung had secretly ordered ‘Chinese People’s Volunteers’ into action in Korea. Those Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) consisted of some 380,000 soldiers, organized into two army groups, nine corps-size field armies and 30 infantry divisions.

From October 13 to 25, the 130,000-man CCF XIII Army Group covertly crossed the Yalu River in the western sector opposite EUSA. Two weeks later, the 120,000-man CCF IX Army Group also moved surreptitiously into the eastern sector in Korea, opposite X Corps. Because of intelligence failures, both in Washington and in Korea, the Chinese managed to achieve almost total surprise. Their intervention would change not only the battlefield conduct of the war but also its strategic nature.

According to the Soviet archives, in May 1950, Mao had agreed to join with the Soviet Union and support the North Korean invasion of South Korea. As the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Evgeny Bajanov noted at the 1995 Georgetown conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai ‘confirmed [on July 2, 1950] that if the Americans crossed the 38th parallel, Chinese troops disguised as Koreans would engage the opponent’ and that Chinese armies had already been concentrated in the area of Mukden in Manchuria. ‘In August-September 1950 on a number of occasions,’ said Bajanov, ‘Mao personally expressed concerns over the escalation of American military intervention in Korea and reiterated the readiness of Beijing to send troops to the Korean peninsula ‘to mince’ American divisions.’ But when Stalin sent a message to Mao on October 1, asking him to ‘come to the rescue of the collapsing Kim regime,’ Mao refused, instead suggesting ‘the Koreans should accept defeat and resort to guerrilla tactics.’

Under intense Soviet pressure, however, on October 13, ‘the Chinese, after long deliberation, did agree to extend military aid to North Korea,’ said Bajanov. ‘Moscow in exchange agreed to arm the Chinese troops and provide them with air cover. According to the available information, it was not easy for Beijing to adopt that military decision. Pro-Soviet Gao Gang and Peng Dehuai [who would later command the CCF in Korea] finally managed to convince Mao to take their side. Their main argument was that if all of Korea was occupied by the Americans, it would create a mortal danger to the Chinese revolution.’

In any event, after feints in early November against EUSA at Unsan and against X Corps at Sudong, both of which were ignored by Far East Command intelligence officers, the CCF launched its main attack. On November 25, the XIII Army Group struck the EUSA, driving it out of North Korea and retaking Seoul on January 4, 1951. Meanwhile, on November 27, the CCF IX Army Group struck X Corps, and by December 25, 1950, had forced its evacuation from North Korea as well.

At first, both Moscow and Beijing were elated. On January 8, 1951, Bajanov reported, Stalin cabled Mao, ‘From all my heart I congratulate Chinese comrades with the capture of Seoul.’ But Bajanov added, ‘By the end of January 1951…the euphoria of Communists started to decline and quite soon it disappeared and was replaced with worries, fear, confusion and at times panic.’

What made the difference was Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who took command of EUSA on December 26, 1950, replacing Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, who had been killed in a jeep accident. Ridgway turned EUSA from dejection and defeat into a tough, battle-ready force within a matter of weeks. ‘The Eighth Army,’ wrote Fehrenbach, ‘rose from its own ashes in a killing mood….By 7 March they stood on the Han. They went through Seoul, and reduced it block by block….At the end of March, the Eighth Army was across the parallel.’

Attempting to stem that tide, on April 22, 1951, the CCF launched its great spring offensive, sending some 250,000 men and 27 divisions into the attack along a 40-mile front north of Seoul. It was the largest battle of the war, but by May 20 the CCF, after some initial gains, had been turned back with terrible losses. As Time magazine put it, ‘The U.S. expended ammunition the way the Chinese expended men.’ After that success, the United States was in good position to retake the offensive and sweep the CCF from Korea. But Washington ordered EUSA to maintain its defensive posture, for U.S. military policy had changed from rollback and liberation to containment. That ruled out battlefield victory, for the best possible result of defensive operations is stalemate.

On July 10, 1951, armistice talks began between the U.N. Command and the CCF/NKPA. After the front line stabilized in November 1951, along what was to become the new demarcation line, the fighting over the next 20 months degenerated into a bloody battle for terrain features like Old Baldy, Heartbreak Ridge and Pork Chop Hill. The U.S. forces suffered some 63,200 casualties to gain or retain those outposts. With victory no longer in sight, public support for the war plummeted, and in 1952 Truman decided not to run for re-election rather than risk almost certain defeat. With the signing of the armistice agreement on July 27, 1953, the war finally came to an end.

Dwarfed by the total U.S. victory in World War II, the negotiated settlement in Korea seemed to many observers to be a defeat and at best a draw. Certainly it seemed no model for the future.

As indicated previously, it was Eisenhower’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation that dominated the immediate postwar era. Conventional forces, like the Korean War itself, were dismissed as irrelevant. Even when the atomic war strategies were challenged by the John F. Kennedy administration’s policy of flexible response, conventional forces were still ignored in favor of the ‘new’ counterinsurgency war. Vietnam would be its test case.

The Vietnam War, like the Korean War, was pursued on the strategic defensive–the United States still not realizing that the best result possible was stalemate. In Korea, U.S. forces kept the external enemy at bay while giving local forces responsibility for counterguerrilla operations. But in Vietnam, this strategy–the only one with any hope of success–was regarded as ineffective, even though the Korean War objective of preserving South Korea’s independence had been attained.

Only in the wake of an unqualified failure in Vietnam, where Saigon fell not to guerrilla attack but to a Korea-style cross-border blitzkrieg by the North Vietnamese army, did the limited validity of both nuclear war and counterinsurgency operations become evident. The most probable future conflict was still a war fought with conventional weapons in pursuit of limited political goals–in short, another Korea.

That was exactly what happened in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, and what the Pentagon is now prepared for with its policy of being able to fight two regional conflicts almost simultaneously.

One of those potential regional conflicts is Korea. As President Bill Clinton told the Korean National Assembly in July 1993, ‘The Korean peninsula remains a vital American interest.’ As proof of U.S. resolve, almost a half century after it was decimated at Kunu-ri protecting EUSA’s withdrawal from North Korea, the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division currently sits astride the Seoul invasion corridor as a tripwire guaranteeing certain U.S. involvement in any future conflict there.

[BSmack]

You either didn't read or didn't understand what I wrote -

That the War was Wrong is Irrelevant - Ali was a coward and an ingrate to a country that made him Wealthy

He's a traitor to the 58K Americans that died over there - Fuck Him

I understand your point, I don't think it relevant. Conscription for a foreign war should be a war crime.

[Goober McTuber]

He's a traitor to the 58K Americans that died over there - Fuck Him

It's a shame a bunch of those 58K didn't have the sense and the balls that Ali had. We might have gotten out of that mess sooner.

[poptart]

Conscription for a foreign war should be a war crime.

Well, it certainly isn't constitutional.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charte ... cript.html

Nowhere does Article 1, Section 8 say that our military is to be used to repel invasions of land which is not ours.
Further, the 13th Amendment prohibits involuntary servitude, which a military draft certainly is.

The Vietnam War draft was wrong on so many levels.

Clay was right to say nyet to what he was illegally being forced to participate in.

[smackaholic]

Yes.

Probably not.

Maybe.

What makes Korea any different from Vietnam? Other than, S. Korea is easier to defend simply do to geography. In each case you have a country in civil war, one side backed by us, the other by the commies.

[Goober McTuber]

What makes Korea any different from Vietnam?

North Korea invaded South Korea. The US and UN forces responded.

We really initiated the Vietnam War (see Gulf of Tonkin).

[MuchoBulls]

Funny how No one adds Draft Dodger to his list of accomplishments....

Any time his name was mentioned my father would say draft dodger.

[Goober McTuber]

Funny how No one adds Draft Dodger to his list of accomplishments....

Any time his name was mentioned my father would say draft dodger.

He wasn't a draft dodger. He was a conscientious objector. Draft dodgers went to Canada or obtained fake 4F's.

[Diego in Seattle]

Funny how No one adds Draft Dodger to his list of accomplishments....

Any time his name was mentioned my father would say draft dodger.

He wasn't a draft dodger. He was a conscientious objector. Draft dodgers went to Canada or obtained fake 4F's.

[BSmack]

You're of the age that should /would have gone if your number was pulled

Goobs has posted many times about observing Mike Webster during his time at UW. IIRC, that would be a wee bit after they stopped pulling numbers.