book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
Unfortunately for Mr. Stone, scientists have learned how to deal with theories and hypotheses and conspiracies about the way the world is, the way the world works, the way the world should be. Occams Razor is the scientific principle which holds that events should be explained by the most simple principles available. This is why science has made such great progress in recent centuries. To some extent, an analogy exists in Law: judges should always reach decisions based upon the narrowest of interpretations of the applicable statutes. The alternative, in both cases, is to go haywire into ever increasing spirals and ripples of fiction and fantasy. Look at the Kennedy conspiracy theories.
Stone should discover Occams razor. It is ironic that his buddies on the Left criticize the domino theory-the dominoes sure fell fast enough, backwards, after the Soviet Union collapsed-but are willing to swallow multiyear, multi-national, multiple personality treatises like this one. Here we have a US State department and Asian military establishment so clueless that they didn't even have maps of the Peninsula, but they are going to 'provoke the North Koreans into attacking so that we could stay in Germany, Japan, arm Europe, draw northeast Asia into superpower politics' ad nauseum. He has history backwards: Russia and NK gambled on a short three week war that would embarrass the west. What they got was a 3 year battle that upgraded Europe, NE Asia and the US to cold war footing and placed on hold-forever, as it turns out-Stalin's plan for a general European war in 1957. To boot China had to put aside their plan to invade Formosa later that summer. Darn! These despots can have such poor timing! Always showing their true colors....
Actually Stone has it all figured out! The Korean War was fought so that Chiang Kai Shek could make a lot of money in soybean futures. That kind of tells you what trash this book is.
This book was written by looking at NY Times dispatches-there are hundreds of them in the references. Its all personalities...MacArthur this, Willoughby that, Kim Il Sung here, Syngman Rhee there, heck even Stalin, Mao and Truman get mentioned. No ideology here! Stone must have realized, even back then, how repugnant a state North Korea was. Nor a mention of a single battle (Pusan perimeter is 'the battle of the beachhead'). Then what you must do is interpret the dispatches Stones way. When Syngman Rhee makes a statement like 'The May and June period will be critical in the life of our nation' that is absolutely incontrovertible evidence, according to Stone, that the South Korean president knew an invasion was coming on a specific date and time. The fact that Chinese soldiers had almost no weapons "was proof," sniffs Stone, that Russia and China wanted peace! You mean it had nothing to do with the traditional way Chinese soldiers fought-gaining the weapons of their enemies as they advanced; and dying by the frozen millions when they did not. He weeps immense tears over the problem 'Taiwan presented to Jacob Malik's return to the U.N.' And pity poor Russia... since they denied the UN had any say on matters Korean, they couldn't run to the world body after one of their airports near Vladivostok was strafed by US forces.
According to Stone the Chinese disappearance in mid November was because it was going to the UN to state its' case on Formosa. Those big bully Americans threw a wrench in these plans by attacking Sinuiju. Far better, in my view, to take the approach Ridgway would soon be taking: if they are retreating, let them go. If it's a trap to lure US forces northward, don't get sucked into it.
Of course Stone chimes in with the inevitable huffing and puffing over the US crossing the parallel. Sorry, that house is easily blown down. For one, the orders to Macarthur could easily be interpreted to allow such an eventuality (as, of course, the General did); second, there is no moral or ethical reason why the border has to be a one way mirror Red armies can trample with impunity while being inviolable to responding forces.
I.F. Stone has a big ego problem, and you can see it right at the start of this book. He actually suggests that the US embassy in Mexico spent precious taxpayer dollars buying up all copies of this book in 1952 (the source was Che Guevara...need we say more?) so that the poor Mexican citizenry couldn't read his remarkable expose on Korea. Again, occams razor suggests a far better explanation: then, as now, toilet paper was in short supply in Mexico-even in the vacuous, pampered world of the US State department. A favorite thing to do was to take a publication-in Moscow Pravda or Izvestia were favorites-and use it to wipe your butt. I am sure that was the fate of this text-and for once, the book was worth the paper it was printed on.
Does this mean you shouldn't read the book. NO! Please read it to see the kneejerk anti-Americanism, the cloying apologies and histrionics that pass as analysis for behavior of the North Koreans and Russians. It is essential that books like this be read so that the extent and duration of the 'blame America first' lobby-whose head is ducked briefly after the Trade Center bombings-becomes clear.