Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century

Korea

30 Korea June 6, 2002 The war in Korea is not over, only a cease-fire prevents the outbreak of another catastrophic blood bath. This is why Koreans on both sides of the 38th parallel want to replace the 1953 armistice with a peace treaty. In the meantime, 37,000 U.S. troops remain in Korea, one of the world’s most highly militarized locations. Who started the war in Korea? The official story is that it began with an attack by North Korea on orders from the Kremlin. But the Korean War was not the result of an outbreak of fighting early in the morning of June 25, 1950. Actually the peninsula had been in armed conflict for several years. In May of 1949, South Korea launched several battalions in an attack on North Korea. Only by claiming that North Korea invaded South Korea could the US send troops under the United Nations Flag. The question of who started the war was critical to obtain this UN cover. If South Korea was found to have initiated hostilities during the incident of May, 1949 the UN Charter would have required that South Korea be censured as the aggressor and any subsequent UN intervention would have been directed at defending North Korea from further aggression. One must look at the work of I.F. Stone and his Hidden History of the Korean War for a detailed understanding of how the U.S. falsely claimed that North Korea attacked first. The Korean War was triggered by Syngman Rhee with behind the scenes support of John Foster Dulles. Rhee wanted to rule over all of Korea and called for reunification through military means. Fifty-five thousand American lives were sacrificed in the Korean War; 3,000,000 Koreans and Chinese were killed. Every city in North Korea was bombed to total destruction. Just as in Vietnam, our administration could never clearly explain to the GI’s why they were sent to Korea. The troops never understood why they should go to an impoverished land and kill people who knew neither communism nor democracy and who really wanted to be left alone. The only sensible words were heard by General 31 Omar Bradley who stated that the Korean War was a “wrong war against a wrong enemy at the wrong place in the wrong time.” Lies and deception also took the lives of 3,000,000 people in Vietnam a few years later. The most common remark from Vietnam Veterans is, “I was lied to.” Albert Einstein stated that the US had manipulated the UN for its own benefit. He went on to say that great powers do not act on the basis of facts but only manufacture facts to serve their purposes and force their will on smaller nations. And now is the time for Americans to stand with the Korean people in their struggle for reunification and reconciliation. Continuing misinformation from Washington can lead us to resume our 52 year old war with the possibility of a U.S. first strike nuclear disaster. Quite simply, empire never learns because it operates on power and considers truth to be irrelevant. That is why the ignorance and malice of the Korean War was repeated in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan. We must stop before we kill again! The first casualty of war is truth. ...