Inchonese want MacArthur Gone..

[MKSheppard]

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050117 ... .htm]Linka

South Koreans doubt relevance of MacArthur
By Jeremy Kirk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published January 18, 2005

INCHEON, South Korea -- More than 50 years after he directed a brilliant amphibious invasion that repelled North Korean forces during the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is no longer welcome.

The focus of the latest outpouring of South Korea's anti-Americanism is on a bronze statue of the general, mounted on a massive 16-foot slab of concrete in this port city's Freedom Park.

Police have guarded the statue 24 hours a day since it was targeted three years ago by protest groups angry with American policies.

Now civic groups are angry that taxpayer money is being spent to protect the monument.

The dispute over the MacArthur statue is symbolic of South Korea's internal debates over its history, the division between North and South and sweeping generational changes.

"In the urgency of the Korean War, he was the hero," said Choe Woong-ki, 68, looking at the statue. "I don't know what other people think, but for someone like me who has been through the Korean War, he was a contributor to our country. I don't understand."

Incheon was the worst place to invade: The 30-foot tides were troublesome, and nearby Wolmi Island provided a panoramic view to watch an oncoming attack and form a defense.

But on Sept. 15, 1950, about 13,000 Marines and other U.N. forces came ashore with minimal resistance from North Korean troops.

The inscription at the monument reads: "We shall never forget what he and his valiant officers and men of the United Nations Command did here for us and for freedom. And until the last battle against the malignant infection of communism has finally been won, may we never forget it was also he who said 'In war, there is no substitute for victory.' "

It may be that strong language that has spoiled the statue's welcome at a time when anti-communist remarks are considered anachronistic.

South Korea's ruling Uri Party has worked aggressively to abolish the National Security Law, a decades-old anti-communism measure.

President Roh Moo-hyun's administration has muted its criticism of communist North Korea on human rights and nuclear weapons issues to avoid jeopardizing growing economic cooperation.

"Ideology used to be important, but it's time now to talk about how to make a better living," said Shin Bok-su, 40, whose young son read the monument's inscription in Korean out loud. "It would be better to move the memorial. It's not necessary here."

So Seong-ho, secretary-general for a group calling itself Incheon Solidarity for Peace and Participation, said that an area such as Freedom Park shouldn't focus on war.

His civic group staged a small demonstration in the park last month, when an actor dressed like an army officer stood on a pedestal and was dragged away.

Police dispersed protesters, who held signs saying, "I want to live in the city of peace" and "Give back the park to the citizens."

Two South Korean police officers assigned to guarding the MacArthur statue said they learned that the U.S. general was a national hero in school.

"It's funny we guard the statue just like we guard the U.S. military bases [in South Korea]," said 22-year-old Shin Song-jin, an officer on duty.

[Crown]

If it's the idiology on the inscription that's bothering them, why not change the inscription?

[Chardok]

Now civic groups are angry that taxpayer money is being spent to protect the monument.

If you idiots wouldn't threaten to fuck up the statue, there would be no need to waste taxpayer dollars protecting it.


Shitlickers.

[The Third Man]

It's well worth preserving, inscription and all, if only for the source of richly ironic amusement it will provide to the comrades when Communism finally does triumph across the world.

[Medic]

I'd chalk most of this up to a distinct generation gap. Those who do remember the Korean War have perspective that is sorely lacking by the younger generation.

And some protests at least, though certainly anti-American in appearance, are over base closures and its affect on that local economy. Not the majority though... The last thing I want to see over here is a burning American flag but I know it happens.

[CJvR]

Why should the commies get off without having to answer for the horrors their ideology caused? Nazis get treated with the contempt they deserve but whenever communism get bad PR there are immediatly some whiners who rush out of the bushes and start sniveling about the obsolete attitudes and prejudice of people.

[Col. Crackpot]

Why should the commies get off without having to answer for the horrors their ideology caused? Nazis get treated with the contempt they deserve but whenever communism get bad PR there are immediatly some whiners who rush out of the bushes and start sniveling about the obsolete attitudes and prejudice of people.

and if you dare point out the atrocities commited by Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Jong Il, Mao etc you get one of two anwers from Communism's misguided stalwart defenders:

1: The capatalists made them do it!
2: The capatalist swine do it too!

if you find a communist with a functioning brain cell or two you'll get the response:

well, we just havn't found the right people to implement it yet.

sigh

[Medic]

Why should the commies get off without having to answer for the horrors their ideology caused? Nazis get treated with the contempt they deserve but whenever communism get bad PR there are immediatly some whiners who rush out of the bushes and start sniveling about the obsolete attitudes and prejudice of people.

Communism is dead
At least the real hardcore type that that gave your garden variety pinkos a bad name. The US still hates Cuba but much of the world doesn't really appreciate that ... the fact that communism simply faded from view and criticism so suddenly always leaves me scratching my head.

[CJvR]

and if you dare point out the atrocities commited by Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Jong Il, Mao etc you get one of two anwers from Communism's misguided stalwart defenders:

A more normal response is that...
Stalin - wasn't a communist, he was a facist and insane.
Pol Pot - insane.
Castro - brave defender of the true faith from the US imperialist swines...
Mao - wasn't a communist, he was a facist and insane.
Kim - isn't a communist, he is a facist and insane.

I usualy respond by asking if you have to be insane to belive in communism or if trying to implement it drives you insane...

Also pointing out that the Nazis were National Socialists tend to annoy the reds, sort of wreck their logic:
Nazism = pure evil
Communism = the opposite of Nazism = pure good

Communism is dead

No it isn't because no one have driven a stake through it's heart and killed it permanently. There are politicians openly proclaiming their allegiance to communism, they should be held in as much contempt as the freakshows that parade around in brownshirts occationaly but they are not. Instead they are elected into parliment and frequently tip the scales in favor of social-democrat/green goverments.
There was a good effort here a few years ago to correct the abyssmaly poor knowledge of the holocaust, good. However a cautios effort to rectify the even worse situation regarding the communist crimes failed mainly because the communist party was against it (SURPRISE!).
Nazism is dead and forever discredited, communism is alive and well in frighteningly large parts of the world.

[Lord Zentei]

What bugs me in addition to the aforementioned points is the guilt by association fallacy they are using: McArthur was an American, they don't like current American policies, hence relevance of MacArthur is questioned despite his contribution in the Korean War. Do these people seriously think that South Korea would have survived without the American forces? Or do they think that the PRNK would have been an acceptable alternative?

[Glocksman]

What bugs me in addition to the aforementioned points is the guilt by association fallacy they are using: McArthur was an American, they don't like current American policies, hence relevance of MacArthur is questioned despite his contribution in the Korean War. Do these people seriously think that South Korea would have survived without the American forces? Or do they think that the PRNK would have been an acceptable alternative?

For a long time, South Korea was a military dictatorship w/US backing.
OTOH, the dictatorship did finally fall and even at its worst was nowhere near as totalitarian as Kim in North Korea.

I can see why South Koreans might have a dislike of US policies given our backing of the dictatorships, but anyone who thinks rule by the North was preferable needs to get his head out of his ass.

[Guardsman Bass]

What bugs me in addition to the aforementioned points is the guilt by association fallacy they are using: McArthur was an American, they don't like current American policies, hence relevance of MacArthur is questioned despite his contribution in the Korean War. Do these people seriously think that South Korea would have survived without the American forces? Or do they think that the PRNK would have been an acceptable alternative?

For a long time, South Korea was a military dictatorship w/US backing.
OTOH, the dictatorship did finally fall and even at its worst was nowhere near as totalitarian as Kim in North Korea.

I can see why South Koreans might have a dislike of US policies given our backing of the dictatorships, but anyone who thinks rule by the North was preferable needs to get his head out of his ass.

As can be seen by the article, most of the older generation does. And the people of what is now South Korea weren't exactly happy back then to join the North; when the North invaded, there were large refugee movements southward.

[Perinquus]

I have never understood the defenders of communism, past, present, or future (for I'm sure there will still be plenty of them in the future). First off, the evidence that it can never work as an economic system is just too abundant even to begin to cover here. Everywhere it has been tried, it has been a dismal failure. Yet it's defenders staunchly insist that real communism, true communism has never been tried anywhere. Ignoring the obvious "no true Scotsman" fallacy here, if you ever read "Das Kapital" or "The Communist Manifesto" with an objective mind, you will understand why "real" communism hasn't been implemented - it's impossible and unworkable. Real people simply won't do the things Marx predicts for them on their own, won't act the way his system requires them to act. So they have to be forced to do it, which is why communism invariably degenerates into dictatorship.

The second thing that amazes me, truly stupefies me about communism's defenders is their willful blindness. And some men of noted intellect, who really were highly intelligent men were some of communism's staunchest defenders. Think of George Bernard Shaw. He paid a visit to the U.S.S.R. in 1931 with his mind made up; Soviet Communism was a wonderful thing and nothing would convince him otherwise. When a junior British diplomat criticized one of Stalin's show trials, he later noted in his diary how "Shaw grew quite indignant and said: 'But they confessed.'" Later in Moscow, at a banquet "Shaw waved his hand at the excellent food and said 'Russia short of food? Look at this!' " How the obvious facts that confessions can be wrung from innocent people with the right methods, or that a banquet of the society's upper crust might still go on while the masses starve amaze me. But Shaw didn't want to believe it, so he wouldn't. Shaw was hardly the only one. There were a number of other prominent Western intellectuals who, in the 1920s and 1930s became disenchanted with capitalism, and turned to communism. They became convinced that communist Russia had adopted a system that was actually superior to Western capitalist societies, and absolutely no amount of evidence to the contrary - even eyewitness evidence - would change their minds. As Malcolm Muggeridge said:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs, [Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like [Walter] Duranty, all resolved, come what might, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook anything, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives.

There other Westerners, like George Orwell, who initially embraced socialist and communist ideals, but had the good sense to recognize Soviet communism (especially under Stalin) for exactly what it was, and rejected it. But these young South Koreans who attack MacArthur's statue... They remind me of Bernard Shaw and the other useful idiots. They have the wreckage of North Korea right next door, dirt poor, unable to meet its own agricultural or industrial needs, its people starving, yet armed to the teeth, with a history of aggression and broken treaties, now trying to acquire nukes. They have this clear example of both the economic fauilure of communism, and its terrible record on human rights on their very doorstep, and yet to them the most dangerous and hated villain is... the United States. And they revile the memory of a man who made a major contribution toward their not being in the terrible straits their neighbors to the north are in. I just don't get it. The human capacity for willful blindness is truly staggering.

[Lord Zentei]

In many regrads, this willful blindness of the apalogists for communism is very similar indeed to that of the apologists for religion. These people claim to be rationalists and champions of science, but in truth they are neither logical nor rational at all, they make leaps of logic and create fantastic ideals to which all must aspire and would see society compel people to these ideals, yet still claiming the moral high ground.

I am reminded of a debate I had with a young left wing activist who was distributing pamphlets decrying the IMF and America among other things. Upon skimming some of said pamphlets, I told her that she and her compatriots had created what in many regards amounted to a "secular religion", though an apparent oxymoron, similarities abounded: there were their dogmatic tenets, the same catagorical rejection of other ideas and evidence at odds with their beleif system, the same failure to change their beleifs in light of new evidence and instead retrofitting evidence to said beleifs, the same apocalyptic prophesies, the same evangelism instead of constructive discourse, the same deification of "holy men" and personality cults of their spiritual leaders, etc, etc. What they had done was largely replace "God" with "History" or the "Proliteriat", "Satan" with "Capitalism" and "Christians" with "The People". Though the idea was to create a perfectly egalitarian state, the reality was the creation of an autocracy which got it's absolute power by a kind of "grace". My words fell on deaf ears, of course.

Like the theistic religions, no doubt communism will survive down the ages in some form or other, keeping its ideals, it's dogma, it's saints and it's irrationality.

[Perinquus]

It's interesting to speculate what might have happened had we fought a "hot" war with the U.S.S.R. instead of a cold one. After WWII, the Nazis were crushed. News cameras filmed the death camps, the wretched survivors who were found in them, mountains of bodies being pushed by bullsozers into hastily dug mass graves, and of course, the gas chambers and ovens in some of the camps, like Auschwitz. The world recoiled in horror from these images, and ever since then, the Nazia have been indelibly stamped as the world's greatest villians.

Now think back to before the war if you can, and remember that just as there were apologists for communism, the Nazis and the fascists in Italy had their admirers in America, Britain, and elsewhere. Charles Lindbergh was something of an admirer of the Nazis. He paid a visit to Germany and was decorated by Goering. Others in the West praised Hitler and Mussolini for "making the trains run on time" and rebuilding their countries' economies after the ravages of the Great Depression. There were even Nazi parties in Britain and the United States, just as there were communist parties. But of course, after the war was over, and all the evidence of the holocaust was paraded before the eyes of the world, it was just so monstrous, and so horrific, that Nazism has acquired an irrevocable stink that has silenced all apologists save for those on the lunatic fringe, who still adhere to Nazi ideals (which I guess proves that there is nothing so odious that some men, somewhere, will not joyfully embrace it - ugh... sometimes I weep for humanity).

Now assuming for the sake of argument that Geo. Patton had got his wish, that we had somehow ended up fighting the Russians right after WWII, and that before they developed the atomic bomb themselves in 1949, before they helped Mao take over in China, we nuked them into submission, toppled Stalin, and occupied the U.S.S.R., and then subsequent to this, we let the newsreel cameras into the gulags, and uncovered evidence of the man-made Ukrainian famine of the 1920s and 30s, and we had exposed communist atrocities to the world as thoroughly as those of the Nazis were exposed, do you suppose then that communism might be discredited and villified the way Nazism is today? Do you suppose that might have silenced communisms defenders and apologists, the way the defenders and apologists of the Nazis were silenced? Would it then have acquired the kind of overwhelming stink of evil and atrocity that Nazism has (for in terms of numbers killed, communism certainly belongs on an equal moral footing with Nazism), and would there today be almost no one willing to defend communism any more than most people today are willing to defend Nazism?

[Vympel]

How on Earth did this thread go from anger at US polices = anger at statue to discussing apologetics for communism? Where in the article is anyone making apologetics for it? The whole reason the inscription of the statue was mentioned at all is because it is a load of anachronistic horseshit, precisely because communism did go out with a whimper, not a bang. It failed, and everyone besides a few die hard irrelevant communists know it. That's why anti-communist rhetoric is viewed as quaint. It's not relevant anymore. We won, let's move on.

[Perinquus]

How on Earth did this thread go from anger at US polices = anger at statue to discussing apologetics for communism? Where in the article is anyone making apologetics for it? The whole reason the inscription of the statue was mentioned at all is because it is a load of anachronistic horseshit, precisely because communism did go out with a whimper, not a bang. It failed, and everyone besides a few die hard irrelevant communists know it. That's why anti-communist rhetoric is viewed as quaint. It's not relevant anymore.

It certainly is relevant in Korea, where you still have a communist totalitarian country in existence, and one which, moreover, has a history of both aggression, and dealing in bad faith. It is also so close in proximity, that South Koreans have no excuse in the world for not being fully aware of its shortcomings, and they also have to know that if not for McArthur and the U.S. armed forces, they would now be as miserable, poor, starved, and oppressed as their cousins north of the DMZ are. That's why it is remarkable that there should be this outpouring of venom against McArthur. It suggests a seriously broken moral compass, and a willful blindness - which is how we got off on this tangent. We started discussing willful blindness.