thedrifter
09-29-07, 07:25 AM
Halberstam Broods on Korea, Cooked Intelligence in Final Book
By Joe Mysak
Bloomberg.com
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- By September 1950, it looked like U.S. troops would be pushed right out of Korea and the entire country would fall to the communists.
General Douglas MacArthur, architect of the U.S. victory in the Pacific during World War II and viceroy in all but name of occupied Japan, had other ideas. The Army and the Marines would outflank the communists with an amphibious landing at Inchon, more than 100 miles north behind enemy lines.
The landing and subsequent victory stunned the North Koreans, and their army crumbled. Had MacArthur stopped there, as so many in Washington wanted him to, every town in America would have named a school after him, one of his officers later recalled.
``Even the shrewdest of men do not always know when their most dramatic moment is over and it is time to leave the stage,'' writes David Halberstam in ``The Coldest Winter,'' his new history of the Korean War. ``For the self-absorbed that is far more likely to be true.''
MacArthur instead decided to exploit the breakthrough and push on to the Yalu River, Korea's northernmost border with China. North to the Yalu and home by Christmas!
The Communist Chinese, fresh from victory over Chiang Kai- Shek (now decamped to Taiwan), had some plans of their own.
Sound familiar? Of course not. The Korean War is one of history's orphans. Walk into any bookstore and you'll find shelf after shelf of books on the American Revolution, the Civil War and both World Wars. Korea gets at most about a foot of space between World War II and Vietnam.
Vietnam Prelude
Halberstam, who died last April at age 73 in a car crash, does nothing less than reclaim Korea as a legitimate historical subject in ``The Coldest Winter,'' his 21st book, and a prequel, if you will, to his 1972 history of the Vietnam conflict, ``The Best and the Brightest.''
It's a fascinating story, heavy on the reporting, in the author's trademark fashion. It's also one that few people really know. An unpopular and undeclared war, Korea first of all represented, according to Halberstam, a tragic misreading of communism's nature in the postcolonial environment. Far from a monolithic threat directed by Moscow, communism in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world, he writes, was a ``convenient instrument of anticolonial forces,'' which turned to the Kremlin for help only after being rejected by Washington.
`Fateful Decisions'
Korea also became a crucible of American politics. The Republican Party, which had been out of power for decades, fastened upon the communist threat and the larger issue of national security and didn't let go. Democrats have been on the defensive ever since.
Perhaps most controversially, the war set a dangerous precedent for the deliberate manipulation of military intelligence, Halberstam writes.
In Korea, MacArthur and his immediate court discounted the Chinese threat, with disastrous results. In Vietnam, and now in Iraq, Washington ``made fateful decisions based on the most limited of truths and the most deeply flawed intelligence in order to do what it wanted for political reasons.''
This, no doubt, would have been Halberstam's chief talking point on his book tour -- now, sadly, being undertaken by his friends. I'll bet he would have had a lot to say on the topic.
``The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,'' is published by Hyperion (719 pages, $35).
(Joe Mysak is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this review: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: September 28, 2007 00:04 EDT
Ellie
By Joe Mysak
Bloomberg.com
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- By September 1950, it looked like U.S. troops would be pushed right out of Korea and the entire country would fall to the communists.
General Douglas MacArthur, architect of the U.S. victory in the Pacific during World War II and viceroy in all but name of occupied Japan, had other ideas. The Army and the Marines would outflank the communists with an amphibious landing at Inchon, more than 100 miles north behind enemy lines.
The landing and subsequent victory stunned the North Koreans, and their army crumbled. Had MacArthur stopped there, as so many in Washington wanted him to, every town in America would have named a school after him, one of his officers later recalled.
``Even the shrewdest of men do not always know when their most dramatic moment is over and it is time to leave the stage,'' writes David Halberstam in ``The Coldest Winter,'' his new history of the Korean War. ``For the self-absorbed that is far more likely to be true.''
MacArthur instead decided to exploit the breakthrough and push on to the Yalu River, Korea's northernmost border with China. North to the Yalu and home by Christmas!
The Communist Chinese, fresh from victory over Chiang Kai- Shek (now decamped to Taiwan), had some plans of their own.
Sound familiar? Of course not. The Korean War is one of history's orphans. Walk into any bookstore and you'll find shelf after shelf of books on the American Revolution, the Civil War and both World Wars. Korea gets at most about a foot of space between World War II and Vietnam.
Vietnam Prelude
Halberstam, who died last April at age 73 in a car crash, does nothing less than reclaim Korea as a legitimate historical subject in ``The Coldest Winter,'' his 21st book, and a prequel, if you will, to his 1972 history of the Vietnam conflict, ``The Best and the Brightest.''
It's a fascinating story, heavy on the reporting, in the author's trademark fashion. It's also one that few people really know. An unpopular and undeclared war, Korea first of all represented, according to Halberstam, a tragic misreading of communism's nature in the postcolonial environment. Far from a monolithic threat directed by Moscow, communism in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world, he writes, was a ``convenient instrument of anticolonial forces,'' which turned to the Kremlin for help only after being rejected by Washington.
`Fateful Decisions'
Korea also became a crucible of American politics. The Republican Party, which had been out of power for decades, fastened upon the communist threat and the larger issue of national security and didn't let go. Democrats have been on the defensive ever since.
Perhaps most controversially, the war set a dangerous precedent for the deliberate manipulation of military intelligence, Halberstam writes.
In Korea, MacArthur and his immediate court discounted the Chinese threat, with disastrous results. In Vietnam, and now in Iraq, Washington ``made fateful decisions based on the most limited of truths and the most deeply flawed intelligence in order to do what it wanted for political reasons.''
This, no doubt, would have been Halberstam's chief talking point on his book tour -- now, sadly, being undertaken by his friends. I'll bet he would have had a lot to say on the topic.
``The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,'' is published by Hyperion (719 pages, $35).
(Joe Mysak is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this review: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: September 28, 2007 00:04 EDT
Ellie