The next thing you know, there might be Nazis working for the U.S. Government. Oops! Too late! Before the end of World War II, the U.S. Government started employing or using not just “former Nazis,” but “former Italian Fascists,” the Sicilian Mafia, and… perhaps more important to Koreans and other East Asians… former officials, officers, and soldiers of the Japanese Empire. Indeed, the ROK Army officer corps was primarily drawn from the ranks of those “treacherous” Koreans, who had collaborated with the Japanese Empire. Therefore, if anyone is going to accuse the Koreans of being “insensitive” towards anyone else for allowing some Korean bar owners to display Nazi symbols or whatever, perhaps they should view it in a realistic light: just because some ignorant person chooses to display Nazi symbols does not mean that they are going to get away with another Holocaust or “Showa.” Indeed, in a way such “Nazi-idiots” are “good” for society because every time they surface, it gives “the good people of this planet” another opportunity to be reminded of what happened and thereby decrease the likelihood of a repeat of such events.

By the way, over thirty years ago I evidently forced one of my German professors into retirement by “harassing” her at almost every opportunity, causing her repeatedly to tell me that she would LOVE to FAIL me based upon my classroom behavior, however since she’d adopted the policy of grading us solely on the basis of test scores and I was by far her best student, unfortunately she could not fail me. Why would any “nice” human being find it “fun” to harass and annoy a professor at every opportunity? Well, she made the “mistake” of telling us early in the year that – as a young Italian woman during World War II – she thought the German officers were “very handsome” in their black uniforms. She evidently dated Nazis. That’s not something she should have told the teenage son of a former U.S. Army Platoon Sergeant, who’d helped “liberate” a couple of Nazi Death Camps. Quite frankly, I hated her with a passion even though she TRIED to teach me German and about the German culture.

And, oddly enough, having learned from my German professor to be a bit more “tolerant” of such people, I was perhaps better able to deal with the fact that – when I arrived in South Korea in 1981 – some of the ROK Army officers were still from that generation of officers, who had previously served the Japanese Empire. I met several retired ROK Army officers, who attested to this fact…. and, yet, to this day… it is still illegal to publish a list of Koreans, who collaborated with the Japanese Empire. In other words, yes, as some of “the slimey North Korean communist propaganda” claims after World War II the “pro-Japanese party” took over South Korea on the behalf of the United States with the help of many Imperial Japanese officials, who were kept on the payroll by the U.S. because it was just “that important” to keep the communists from taking over all of Korea.

Was it worth it? Was it worth over 50,000 American lives plus probably millions of Korean civilians? I’d like to think so, however… my mind is not so ossified (i.e. turned into stone) that I would insist it was totally worth it. Quite frankly, if I’d been in charge of KMAG (i.e. the U.S. Korean Military Assistance Group) prior to the Korean War, I would have (1) tried to keep Kim Gu alive or thoroughly investigate his assassination, (2) done more to get rid of the more hated officers from the Imperial Japanese Army, and (3) done more to ensure that the ROK Government and ROK Army actually had the “POPULAR SUPPORT” of the Korean people. Why? Because – despite all that’s been said about the Army not being a democracy – war is largely about POPULAR SUPPORT and, yes, even if soldiers do not “vote” with “ballots,” they do “vote” with “bullets,” “grenades,” and their “boots.”

Yes, the Korean War could have been avoided and it’d have been much better if it had been avoided and if the Korean people had been allowed to remain under one government. No, I would not “trade” even just one million Korean lives for whatever strategic advantages South Korea and its TUNGSTEN gave the United States during the Cold War. The ROK had about 75% of the world’s known Tungsten resources and, for those of you who do not know the strategic importance of Tungsten, Tungsten is the metallic element with the highest melting temperature, which was essential for making the high-speed, metal-cutting drills and saws, which are essential for making a lot of strategic weapons from jet-engines to anti-tank “bullets” (i.e. sabots before Depleted Uranium (DU) sabots).

Could Kim Il-sung have been detoured from his 1950 invasion of South Korea? Yes, I think so since his argument to “Uncle Joe” Stalin was that (1) the U.S. would not defend the ROK, (2) the war would be quick because the south Korean people would not put up much of a fight because they hated the “pro-Japan” side of the ROK, and… if I’m not mistaken… (3) the U.S. would not use WMDs (nukes) to defend the ROK despite claims that we would use them to stop communist aggression.

The third issue there is something that I do not think Kim Il-sung or “Joe” Stalin could’ve been convinced was “wrong” in that, both George Frost Kennan, Jr, and John Lewis Gaddis (two of the biggest U.S. experts on such matters) have noted that Stalin’s viewpoint was that nukes and other WMDs were basically just useful for scaring weak-willed people, but were otherwise weapons of non-use. In case you should question me on this issue, I’d just refer you to their writings on this matter and note that Kennan was the American, who basically came up with the Cold War Policy of Containment back in 1945, and Gaddis was for many years the professor of Cold War History at the U.S. National Defense University, i.e. where military officers often go to get their masters and PhDs.

However, do I expect many people to understand such matters? Nope, not really. After all, in 1990 and 2003, both President Bushes were able to “fool” the majority of my fellow Americans by their words, which went something like, “Americans just don’t remember HISTORY! They don’t remember that Saddam Hussein is just like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin! If he gets these WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), he will use them!!!”

OMG! LMFAO!

And, yet, nobody in the press anywhere that I saw on TV or heard on the radio or read in the newspapers or magazines… pointed out, “Excuse me, Mister President, but… your statement assumes that neither Hitler nor Stalin had WMDs… which – of course – they did and, no, Mister President, they did not use them… except to scare weak-willed people.”

Pertinence to Korea?

The son of Kim Il-sung has a handful of nukes, but lacks missiles that can accurately deliver them. True, he could use a suitcase or an automobile to deliver them to any point in the world, however… while North Korea’s “Great Leader” might have even as many as a dozen or even two dozen NUKES, my Uncle Sam has over 8,000! And, yes, he can deliver them anywhere in the world OVERNIGHT, faster than UPS!

. . . . . . . .

Think I’m afraid of some two-bit punk with a fistful of nukes?!?

Think you’re lucky? Go ahead, Punk. Make my day!

By the way, if I took Kim Jung-il’s nukes seriously, then I would be a lot more perturbed at Donald Rumsfeld for his businesses helping to get the technology to the Pakistanis, who evidently helped the North Koreans get it. However, as a conservative Republican I have a lot of “faith” in the Grand Old Party (GOP) and, thus, no, I was not too “frightened” when the so-called “Liberal Media” fed us the line about how “dangerous” Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent nukes and other WMDs were. After all, the Reagan administration gave him anthrax.

Wow. It is a really AMUSING WORLD, ain’t it. Donald Rumsfeld is basically the equivalent of a narcotics cop, who has a side-business of running weapons to the crack-addicts and pimps of this world, and, then, goes into an additional business for himself as a true capitalist by selling “protection” to the people, who are afraid of the “boogar-man” heavily-armed crack-addicts. It’s sort of “the American Dream” to be like the U.S. Navy Admiral, who convinced the U.S. DoD (Department of Defense) to vaccinate all service personnel against (non-weaponized) Anthrax, which the Reagan administration had given Iraq, and then… turned right around – as soon as he retired – to go work for the manufacturer of said anthrax-vaccine in exchange for $30,000,000 in stocks and other considerations. Wow! The Big Bucks! And, all it cost the U.S. was a few Americans for every million, who were vaccinated against a form of Anthrax, which was not weaponized and probably would never be used against us… especially if we vaccinated against it… which only left… oh… about a MILLION MILLION other potential bio-weapons to vaccinate against.

Life is humorous at times!

People worried about some business owners in Korea, displaying Nazi symbols. Perhaps someone ought to start another club or bar that specializes in decorations celebrating the Japanese Empire’s role in Korea. Display Imperial Japanese flags and pictures of all the great Koreans, who served the Japanese Empire. Then, perhaps more Koreans would understand why it’s “a bad idea” to have a bar or whatever with a Nazi theme. Or, how about a bar called, “Fascinating Vacations,” which would be decorated with all sorts of memorabilia from the wonderful years of the Chun Doo-hwan “presidency”? And, perhaps show all sorts of glorious pictures of “the Battle of Kwangju,” in which the evil forces of communism were defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army… Maybe someone in Korea might take offense to that?

Signed,

“The Arizona Cowboy,”
i.e. a nickname given to me by some Koreans back in 1982.