BL> Historically, northern Korean falls under the
BL> influence of China, southern Korea under Japan.

KR> the koreans that i have known seemed quite fiercely nationalistic. they
KR> dont borrow much from any of their neighbours, with their own language
KR> and writing. they neither seem to like china or japan (the latter being
KR> quite understandable given the japanese national sport of invading korea).

BL> Quite true, but so is what I wrote.

Pigs arse it is, you are in senile fuckwit mode. Again.

BL> It's like the French falling under English influence;
BL> they fight it furiously but can't avoid it.

Wot a pathetic charade. Poor old Bob, cant even do a decent coat trail now.

KR> i dont quite see what it had to do with vladivostok

BL> The Russians do not have an ice-free port in the Pacific and the
BL> only free passage from Vladivostok is south through the Korea Strait.

Yes.

BL> Both Japan and Korea control that passage.

Pigs arse they do, poor old Bob.

BL> With a communist Korea and land access to Pusan, the Russians
BL> would have the East China Sea and nothing to stop them.

Yeah, right. Pity that the efforts to support communism in Korea
was DONE BY THE CHINESE, and that they were quite capable of providing
the russians with access to the pacific if they chose to, and that
if they chose not to, Korea being communist wouldnt help the russians
one bit. Poor senile old fuckwit Bob. What a pathetic charade.

BL> America is basically a naval power... as England was.

Pity that says sweet fuck all about what the Korean War was about tho.

KR> i think that the yanks were using the same
KR> thinking as in vietnam of the domino theory.

BL> The domino theory was the 60's. Korea was ten years earlier.

Fraid not. The yanks went berko about that they had managed to 'lose'
china to the communists what with Chaing Kai Shek etc, and even had
massive internal witchhunt to hunt down those 'responsible' in the
State Dept etc. The Korean War was more of the same, classic domino
stuff, when in fact what was driving Korea was precisely what drove
Vietnam, a civil war, and the fuckwit yanks never even noticed.

Atleast they didnt lose in Korea, tho it was close there for a while.

BL> I don't even think Macarthur was a good general.
BL> Nimitz was the genius in the Pacific, not Macarthur.

BL> Macarthur failed to hold the Philippines
BL> and left with his entire force taken,

Yes, but so did everyone else that early on. The great
democracys always take a long time to get up a decent head
of steam in a decent war, the same thing happened in europe too.

There was basically fuck all that he could have done to hold the
Philippines with the bulk of the US Pacific fleet gone gurgle gurgle.

BL> he failed at Buna with the Australians cleaning up,

Which was basically a side show of no real importance for the US.

BL> took West New Guinea against no opposition and walked into the
BL> Philippines the same way. The real fighting was somethwere else.

Thats a pretty silly way of looking at it when he was in fact running
the whole of the non naval stuff on this side of the Pacific.

BL> He rebuilt Japan against America's best interests,

Pigs arse he did. That was in fact by far his biggest achievement,
not only getting the Japs to tolerate surrender, but also ensuring
that they got on their feet economically so that we would not see
a repeat of what happened to germany after WW1, with the Japs so
economically fucked that they would try military adventurism again
because they had nothing to lose.

Sure, his gigantic ego ensured that he acted like a king himself,
but that really did work, and thats no mean achievement for a
military commander, doing such a decent job of running an entire
country in peace time and putting in place the structures that
allowed it to keep working, particularly in a democratic sense.

There are bugger all examples of that ever having been done so well.

BL> fucked up in Korea, confronted the Commander in Chief
BL> and and then got sacked by telegram. Great career.

Sure, eventually the ego just brought him totally unstuck, but
its completely silly to claim that nothing was done along the way.
@EOT:

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