why is the korean conflict never talked about?
the korean conflict was an unmitigted disaster for us from the beginning.
politicians will never speak of it, but 10s of thousands of maimed korea veterans and families remember for their lifetimes, with scars and missing limbs to remind them.
our forces were driven, because we were taken completely by surprise as a result of a state department official comment, that emboldened the north koreans, with the soviets. they drove american forces all the way to the tip of the southern peninsula.
we never lost territory in viet nam.
we ended up getting into fights for which our soldiers were under equipped and undertrained. it took 2 or 3 years to ramp up. then we may the strategic error of driving so far north that the chinese felt they had to intervene. we ended up fighting a tremendous battle against the chinese, who drove us back down the peninsula again. at some point, we made the committment to draw a line. it was a sloppy, poorly thought out stategic plan. right after world war 2, everybody was sick of fighting.
we called up pilots from the prop driven aircraft of ww2 to fly jets, for which they weren't trained. they activated tired guys from ww2, who suddenly found themselves dragged back in. all people wanted to do was get it over with and get back to their normal lives. 30,000 of america's finest perished, and untold 10s of thousands were maimed or mentally scarred for the rest of their lives. you may have known a few korean veterans.
the korean conflict has disappeared from the american consciousness. no one wanted to talk about it.
the marine corps remembered it. they saved us. they engaged the chinese at cho sin and other places in the north. the fighting was horrific, but everybody forgot about it, until a couple of books were published in the 1980s.
the first time use of MASH units assured that america woud have an increasing supply of amputees and scarred.
is it not a brutal fact that our veterans may not sue their government doctors for mistreatment, but welfare recipients may?
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