Gee, this thread is 'topic-hopping' a bit.....
As a further contribution:
Lobotomy Boy wrote:
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"It is fun to discuss nuking other countries, Fallingblock, but had Truman nuked North Korea, the Soviets would have retaliated."
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The Soviets were reluctant to exchange nukes with the U.S. at the time.
They had not nearly achieved parity with the U.S. in nuclear weapons production by then, and many in the Soviet leadership were not willing to go to the wall for North Korea. In fact, the seeds of the Sino-Soviet 'falling out' were sown over the Korean War.
It is not "fun" to discuss nuking other countries, Lobotomy Boy, unless your sense of humor is different to mine.
I simply stated fact.
Mao was aware that the U.S. had the nuclear option to use against Chinese troops, and had discussed that option. There was no way he could take the entire Korean Peninsula and be confident that he would retain it. And the cost to the Chinese could become prohibitive.
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Remember, Stalin was calling the shots on the opposing side, which is why the war couldn't end until after he died in 1953.
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And had committed how many Russian troops to the combat zone?
It was a war by proxy, and Stalin was not going to "go to the wall" for the North Koreans. Or the Chinese, likely as not.
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"And the USSR also had developed a hydrogen bomb. Truman knew, as did Ike, that the opposing forces had within the means the capability to destroy most life on the planet. Using nukes under those circumstances at the height of the Cold War would have amounted to criminal insanity."
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The Russians were in fact, not sucessful in producing nuclear weaponry in sufficient quantities to "win" an exchange with the west until well after the Korean War.
Ike and Harry didn't certainly know this, which is why they wisely erred on the side of caution.
as did Mao...who didn't want his efforts at supporting a client communist state to go up in a mushroom cloud which incinerated perhaps millions of his own troops in the process.
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"MacArthur might seem like a noble figure to those who have only a shallow understanding of history, but without doubt history has proven his decision to move UN troops north of the 38th parallel a tragic mistake. Truman's great mistake was in listening to MacArthur's advice."
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How 'shallow' is your understanding of "Dugout Doug" Lobotomy Boy?
Or rather, to what degree is your assumption working overtime?
Old "Dugout" has thoroughly misadvised FDR on the defense of the Philippines, which resulted in the loss of a lot of good troops and equipment the U.S. could ill afford at the start of WWII.
He was rescued from ignominious defeat and imprisonment by the Japanese only by direct order from FDR, who then put "Dugout" in charge of S.W. Pacific operations in Australia, a 'figurehead position' from which he continued to misjudge and misadvise.
"Dugout's" deliberate misuse of Australian troops for the assault on a surrounded and isolated Gona at the close of the Kokoda Track campaign is a classic MacArthur 'stuff-up' - for which he is resented to this day by the survivors.
I certainly don't regard "Mac" as a great military mind.
My mention of him was simply in response to your suggestion that Mao 'could have' taken the entire Korean Peninsula.
Not without more risk than he was willing to take.
As was the case with Harry's (and Ike's) consideration of "Dugout's" suggestion to use the "nuclear curtain".
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I believe history will take a similar view of Bush and his cronies, and very likely the ultimate result will be similar to the results in Korea--a partitioned country that will be a perpetual political hot spot for generations.
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I don't think so. Let's hope Bush and his boys can pull it off and divide the islamofanatic's sponsor states into smaller, isolated political entities. If this is accomplished, it will be regarded as a 'win' of historic proportion.
Your scenario is also highly unlikely.
Iraq is in fact already an artificially partitioned country which has been a hotspot for at least a couple of generations. Thank the British-French consortium for that. Let's fix it.
No struggle for world domination by two massive military machines is involved in Iraq.
The ideological tension is between muslim factions, both within Iraq and its neighbors, generally Sunni vs. Shia with the Kurds hanging out for their own turf.
I would say that, to a large degree, the successful conclusion of the Iraq policy depends upon the rejection by most muslims of the misrepresentation of the situation (by the islamofanatics) as a war with the west.
Our media is not being very helpful here, either.
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The worst would probably be an anti-American Islamic theocracy that makes Iran and Libya look like panty-waisted liberal nations, a theocracy exporting a virulant brand of Islamic terrorism to the west.
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The U.S. has an excellent chance, right now, of preventing such a scenario from coming to pass.
Pulling out would not accomplish anything positive.
Let's hope we've got the will to see it through.
