I was born during the Great War, grew up during the Forgotten War, and started my career during the anti-war war. Each of these wars left a lasting impression on me but in this article, I will focus most of my comments on the Forgotten War.
The Great War was, of course, WWII. We defeated a socialist Germany, thus saving Western Europe. We defeated an Imperial Japan and introduced the era of atomic weapons. What I most remember are the hollowed-out figures from the NAZI death camps and the utter devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The Korean War is called the Forgotten War because it was sandwiched between the glories of WWII and the sorrows of Vietnam. The loss of American lives approached 55,000. For comparison, over 400,000 American lives were lost in WWII and some 58,000 were lost in the Vietnam War. What I most remember were the stories of the human wave assaults on the American soldiers. Huge numbers of the enemy would run into the withering fire of American weaponry. At some point, the Americans would run out of ammunition and barbaric hand to hand combat then began. The Korean War is not officially over. It is in stasis under the terms of an armistice.
The Vietnam War was an anti-war war. While Americans fought and died in the jungles and fields of Southeast Asia, the nation was beset by the phenomena of Americans at home repudiating the military in the field. Eventually, the anti-war political pressure, much of which still exists today in the Democrat Party, stymied the war efforts and led to an ignominious departure from Vietnam.
But back to the Korean War. President Donald Trump has to be praised for taking a risk in the hope of peace. His predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, ignored the growing threat of North Korea. They allowed this threat to fester unattended until North Korea’s nuclear warheads and missile delivery systems were pointed at many of America’s Pacific allies as well as every State in the United States of America. The choices to resolve this situation were few, and hopefully the recent Kim/Trump summit will lead to a reduction of hostility, the denuclearization of North Korea, and the eventual reunification of North and South Korea.
President Trump has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. President Reagan should have gotten one but the politics of the Nobel committee are substantially skewed to the socialist left – and handing a Peace prize to a capitalist is just simply not done. (My guess is the socialists will find a way to give the Prize to somebody other than President Trump. Maybe basketball great Dennis Rodman, who deserves much credit for opening a small crack in the defenses of the North Korean Hermit Kingdom. Nixon had his ping-pong diplomacy with China and Trump has his basketball diplomacy with North Korea.)
In a strange twist of the political winds, the naysayers are opposed to “Giving Peace a Chance”. They prefer to continue with the anti-Trump rhetoric or give credit to “little rocket man” Kim. I don’t think President Trump cares as he is a results-oriented tough guy. I kind of like that.