The Super Summary of World History (109 page)

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    The Secretary of State, in a speech about US interests in the east, omitted mentioning South Korea. This may have led the communist dictators to conclude that South Korea was not a vital interest of the USA; thus, the US would not defend the little nation if it was invaded.

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    The terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 were another elephantine intelligence failure for the United States. No change from 1950 to 2001.

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    The United Nations would fail to act when North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in 1975. It would act to repel the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990.

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351
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    I have always wondered why the air theorists thought bombing would work against a totalitarian government where the will of the people means nothing.

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352
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    Communist spies working on the docks in San Francisco and Japan had warned that something was up, but the North didn’t listen.

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353
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    Here is the rub of not fully discussing MacArthur’s plan. The move north should have been considered
then
, not later after the landings and the move north had started.

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    Satellite surveillance was not available in the 1950s.

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355
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    Seoul would change hands
four times
and be reduced to ruin by the time of the cease-fire in July of 1953.

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356
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    The Chinese and North Koreans did
not
use the AK-47 in Korea; they used the PPSh-41. This was a submachine gun with a 71-round drum magazine that fired a pistol round. It was very effective in spraying bullets all over the landscape, especially at night when they could get in close.

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357
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    For all my complaining about MacArthur, he was skillful in his management of Japan after World War II.

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    Which US intelligence did
not
know about (wow, that’s news). The MIGs were a complete surprise.

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359
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    It should be noted this is the WWII kind of set-piece battlefield
, not the “modern” battlefield
of indiscriminate murder by people with bombs strapped to themselves firing them off in a crowded marketplace.

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360
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    As a side note, the US Marine 1st Division was in the line, yet no major communist assault was mounted against it. For the rest of the war, the communists would not frontally assault a US Marine position. When reviewing maps of this communist assault, look at the center of the UN line and look for the abbreviation 1st MarDiv (First Marine Division), and you will see the arrows of the communist advance hitting units on both sides of the division, but no attack on the position of the 1MarDiv.

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361
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    In my opinion, the Chinese communists lost almost 1 million men in its attempts to push the United Nations off the Korean peninsula. Since WWII, most wars are categorized as “small” because by comparison they are small.

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362
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    Note the Soviets did not use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Were they somehow constrained by Truman’s decision?

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363
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    Technically, a cease fire just means the shooting has stopped for a time. N Korea repudiated the cease fire in June of 2009, but what this means is uncertain. N Korea has been developing nuclear arms. Pressure from the US to cease nuclear arms production has caused N Korea to lash back, and the repudiation of this agreement is part of the blowback.

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This Kind of War: the Classic Korean War History—Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
by T.R. Fehrenbach

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365
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    The French have a way of dealing with others that seems to make everyone feel inferior, and this did not go over well after the Japanese had departed. The Japanese were far worse, but that did not mean the French were viewed as good.

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366
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    Stalin died in 1953.

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367
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    Many of them still maintain these were civil wars.

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368
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    By miserly, I do not mean insubstantial. I simply mean not enough was given in military aid and support troops. US airpower alone may have given Chang enough of an edge to survive.

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369
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    A set piece battle is a conventional battle. Two armies clash with lines of men, flanks, artillery and the rest. Guerrilla warfare entails avoiding set piece battles until the guerrilla units are strong enough for a set piece fight. The goal of turning to set piece battles is to finally destroy the government’s army and take over.

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370
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Street Without Joy,
Bernard B. Fall.

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371
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    The United States believed the days of colonialism were over—and how right Washington was; however, the politicians did not see the end results of this quick collapse which brought turmoil and death on a grand scale as small nations went to war with one another over the unrealistic boundary lines drawn by the colonial empires.

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372
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    For example, T. Roosevelt had interfered in other government’s internal affairs to get the Panama Canal constructed.

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373
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    Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, and others.

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374
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    Johnson defeated Senator Goldwater by claiming Goldwater was a warmonger and implying he (Johnson) was a man of peace. It was Johnson that committed hundreds of thousands of US troops to Vietnam. Shows how much a person can trust the claims of a politician. LBJ also overcame Goldwater’s charges of corruption, mainly because the press ignored them.

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375
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    Documents show that no attack took place on the night in question; but Johnson said otherwise, no doubt knowing the truth. Johnson was very used to lying to the public for his own gain. See:
Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2)
by Robert A. Caro, 1991, Vintage Press.

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376
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    The United States would face the same problem in the War in Iraq under President George W. Bush (Bush number 2).

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377
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    UH stood for Utility Helicopter. The troops nicknamed it the Huey. It was the “jeep” of modern warfare.

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378
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    The neighboring nations to both Vietnams and controlled by the Communist along the area of the trail.

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379
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    Giap was the overall communist military commander for North Vietnam.

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380
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    It should be well noted that other nations were in Vietnam. Australia, for example, perceived it was in their national interest to keep communism as far away from them as possible and so assisted in the war.

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381
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    By 1972, only sixty-nine thousand US Troops were in Vietnam. South Vietnam held out longer than normally remembered.

[
382
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    The former secretary of defense who figured largely in starting and managing the war in Vietnam under Kennedy and Johnson. McNamara was one of the reasons the war was fought so poorly.

[
383
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    Proof that Clausewitz was right when he said war was political (a continuation of policy by other means).

[
384
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    Kennedy and Nixon bookended another US endeavor, the race to the moon. Kennedy announced it was Americans’ goal to reach the moon by the end of the decade. When the landing was made, Nixon was president.

[
385
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    An estimated 1.7 million people were killed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. The estimate is probably low.

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386
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    For an excellent Post-modern view of history read
The Times History of the World
, by Richard Overy, 2008, Times Books. Especially interesting are pages xviii and xix where historical theory is discussed from the Greeks to the Post-modern era. Overy does not say his view is Post-modern; however, when he says there are no true turning points in history, and progress is a false concept, he is adopting the Post-modern view of no mega-narratives, or no overarching patterns.

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    The branch of philosophy studying the nature of knowledge and in particular its foundations, scope, and validity.

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388
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    Note that rationalism sounds a lot like Descartes, and empiricism sounds a lot like objectivism.

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389
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    Notice the West had not adopted eastern ideas of totalitarian governments and individual subservience to the state. If we do not adopt their ideas, why do we believe they will adopt ours?

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390
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    Isa 65:20. When it speaks of easily living past 100, the era spoken of is thought to be in the millennium, after the return of Christ.

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391
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    I say “seems” because most of this is contained in the book of Revelations, and this last book of the Bible is exceedingly hard to decipher.