Using 80-120 atomic bombs against Chinese cities may have been overkill.
But I really don’t understand why China was ‘off limits’ to conventional bombing.
Bombs, rockets and napalm could be used against Chinese railroads, bridges, tunnels, ports, warehouses, depots, dams, power plants, shipyards, factories, mines, etc
I think a sustained bombing campaign against the Chinese would have forced them to pull out of Korea.
In much the same way that napalm is overkill for lice.
Because there wasn’t much point in turning a medium sized stupid war into a much bigger, much stupider war.
It wasn’t a stupid war. Tell that to the men who fought. UN Security Council Resolution 84 obligated us to repel the communist invasion of SK.
Well, now we’re just negotiating the price.
moonshot925, does anything like “killing millions of civilians is a bad thing” at all enter into your calculus about this topic? Or are the lives of non-Americans completely without value?
It’s called collateral damage. The Chinese should have thought about that when they entered the war in October 1950.
So it has no value whatsoever? Is anything unacceptable, then? I’m genuinely wondering about the “human element”. Does that enter into the equation? Does the prospect of dead children bother you?
I asked if it was a stupid war to one of the men who fought over there…my father. He doesn’t share your opinion. He thinks it was worse than stupid (mostly because they dragged his ass over there to do the fighting).
American lives are not more valuable than others. Dropping nukes in any conflict, especially a minor regional one no one wanted to expand to a truly global affair, after we learned just how truly horrible nukes were would the time most fucking stupid thing ANY nation could do. The notion that we could have done it because we had more nukes is only slightly less fucked up than the notion that we could have done it because they couldn’t yet deliver nukes to the American continent.
No, I just would like to know what exactly did SAC teach their crewmen. If moonshot is anything to go by, it consisted mostly of lectures like well then, this here is a picture of a non American, ain’t he ugly, well she/he/it is not really human, no shame in wanting ta kill em all, regrettably he got his own nukes.
One’s view about the ethics of bombing civilians depends largely on the moral point of view.
North Korea was burned to the ground by American incendiary bombs and napalm during the war. Over 1 million civilians were killed.
We could probably have won the war if that bombing was expanded to China. Attacks against Chinese industry, infrastructure and transportation would have diminished their ability to wage war.
This is what General MacArthur said.
To me it sounds monstrous. The ends do not always justify the means. Bombing is not always wrong- but in my opinion, in the situation you describe, it would have been one of the most monstrous crimes in all of human history. I believe it would have turned the world against us.
In what universe are we now living that the UN didn’t win the war? I’m looking at a map of the world right now and South Korea’s still there.
And if the entire security of the free world for centuries to come rested on this hideous plan of mass murder and poisoning the earth, it might possibly have been justifiable. But “We could probably have got away with it and Russia durstn’t do nothing” is not justification. You have to ask yourself whether the moral price of being the tyrant of the world was one you wanted to pay. What good does it do to put one over on the Evil Empire when it turns out that, lo and behold, you now are the Evil Empire - orders of magnitude more heinous than Genghis Khan?
Agreed.
I’ve also never really agreed with the idea that the war was “a draw”. Obviously, yes the US and UN forces didn’t overrun and take over North Korea, but they succeeded in their initial objective which was to prevent South Korea from being taken over.
And yes, before anyone points it out, I’m also aware that technically the war didn’t end, that we’re in the midst of a “cease-fire”.
Admittedly, thinking of wars as if they were games to be “won”, “lost”, or “drawn” has always struck me as pretty simplistic.
That is bigoted bullshit.
The UN failed to unite the peninsula under a democratic government. So for 59 years the people of North Korea have lived under communist tyranny.
Wasn’t this the same Douglas MacArthur who had been certain the Chinese wouldn’t send troops into Korea?
The Korean War also failed to restore Chiang on the mainland, free Eastern Europe, bring peace to the Middle East, and cure cancer.
You have to keep your goals realistic.
I think the result would be millions and millions of dead Americans. And billions of other dead human beings.
I happen to know someone who had the nuclear keys for the weapons designated for the Fulda Gap in Germany during the 1970s. I also studied nuclear theory in the 1980s. A great deal of care was taken to avoid having psychologically unstable people in the chain of command during that time. From the early 50s on, the theory of nuclear weaponry was deterrence: both sides simply had too many bombs to make it winnable. The idea was to ensure that damage to both sides would make war unthinkable. And it worked. And we were terrified it might result in war. At least once a Russian commander refused to launch during a conditions that orders required it and it turned out the supposed US incoming attack was due to bad information.
The use of nuclear weapons was considered during Korea. And rejected as too dangerous and extreme. This was when the USSR did not have nearly as many bombs as the US. But such usage would have required occupying the entire world. The US Congress was not about to declare war on the USSR over Korea. As evil as Stalin was, he was not our problem.