Roughstuff's Korean War Discussion Page
Ladies and gentlemen, nerds and nebbisches, soldiers, sailors, Marines (note capital letter, ye jarheads), flyboys and landlubbers, from near and far, young and old, welcome to Roughstuff's Korean War discussion page.
I set up this page becuase not only is the Korean War forgotten, the lessons it taught us have been largely forgotten, too. More precisely, two mistakes we made in that era have come back to haunt us for decades....
- The Korean War taught the President, the Congress, and the Pentagon that American soldiers could fight for years and die by the the thousands without having a declaration of war ever made.
- The founding fathers agonized over making the President commander-in-chief of the Armed forces. They knew this power was very great and easily abused. As a result they gave congress the authority--and the responsibility-- to declare war before our soldiers could be committed to a conflict. What a joke that is. Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton must be turning in their graves....along with over 100,000 vets who have joined them since 1950.
- The Korean War taught the communists and puppet governments worldwide that all they had to do was say boo! and American troops would be on the scene, bleeding and dying, by sunset.
- More precisely, the communists learned they could use local insurgent uprisings to fight proxy wars with the US. The US would look foolish bogged down as world policeman, the US would suffer the casualties, and US resolve would deteriorate. Not until Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s did we reverse the sitaution and start bogging down the {Russians} in a similar fashion.
Looking forward, related issues loom in front of us.
- What kind of threat is the Korean peninsula to Asian stability now and in the near future?
- What might a United Korea mean for Asia economically and politically??
In the form below, feel free to send questions or comments about this page ( which will be expanding rapidly soon) to me. Before you send me any mail you probably should have a look at my
Your thoughts and opinions matter.....