Reply #39: The essay by Brian Willson is excellent. You should read it all.

[ronnie624]

General Mark Clark replaced Van Fleet as UN commander in Korea. Clark was opposed to a negotiated settlement of the war, and he believed in throwing everything at the enemy he could. He chose to bomb reservoir dikes in the North, flooding the North's sparse agricultural lands, threatening the North Koreans with starvation. He bombed North Korea's hydroelectric plant just south of the Yalu River, and he gave the Air Force permission to strike again at North Korea's industrial and population centers. Pyongyang was bombed again, including the use of napalm, and the burning to death of civilians was extensive. The Air Force was after military targets, but distinction between military targets and civilians was blurred and was recognized as such by Air Force commanders.

The U.S. Navy joined in the overkill by attacking North Korean fishing vessels, crippling this source of food for the Koreans. General Curtis LeMay, of Tokyo firebombing fame, agreed with the Air Force's plan to flatten North Korea's cities, and in retirement was to describe the U.S. as having "burned down every town in North Korea." An estimated 2 million civilians died in North Korea. The bombings created hatred for Americans, and U.S. airmen downed in North Korea were beaten to death.

A few people wrote letters of protest against the bombing, among them the Archbishop of New York, Methodist leaders and the Free Church of Scotland. Winston Churchill, again Prime Minster in Great Britain, and his nation involved in the UN effort in Korea, said he would not take responsibility for napalm being splashed "about all over the civilian population."

Korea: The War before Vietnam, by Callum H. MacDonald, p 234.

No matter how intensive the bombing, the Chinese were able to move their supplies south, largely through deep and narrow trenches. That the extended bombing by the U.S. Airforce contributed to a quicker end of the war is doubtful. The North Koreans were no more inclined to give in to terror bombing than had been the British or the Germans.

<http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch24kor8.htm>

"Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population." - Curtis LeMay

The U.S. was to take the southern zone; the already present Soviet troops were to remain temporarily in the northern one, with the aim of repatriating all Japanese in their respective sectors. The U.S. immediately created the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK), which was the sole legal authority south of the 38th Parallel, and it remained so until the Republic of Korea was formally established on August 15, 1948, exactly three years later. Tragically, Western plans for a post-war division of Korea were proceeding without the prior knowledge or consent of the Korean people.

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The United States direct involvement in Korea beginning in August 1945 provides us the earliest example of U.S. Cold War behavior. When examined carefully, it reveals a great deal about the nature of her national psyche as it is expressed in corresponding misguided political and vicious military policies, as well as the kind of unrestrained terror that was to be in store for its victims. Fear of communism — a national, and Western, mental illness of paranoia — caused a ferocious fury of violence to be directed at undeserving "Third World" peoples, as the monolithic spread of communism, itself grossly exaggerated, was regularly confused with genuine national self-determination (democratic) movements striving for independence from Western, colonial forces.

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And in the autumn of 1950 when U.S. forces were in retreat in North Korea, General Douglas MacArthur ordered all air forces under his command to destroy "every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village" from the Yalu River, forming the border between North Korea and China, south to the battle line. Massive saturation bombings throughout the war using napalm, incendiary, and fragmentation bombs left scorched cities and villages in total ruins. Just as in World War II, the U.S. employed mass destruction through strategic bombing to include civilian populations. This despite the Nuremberg Charter that emerged after that War, largely due to pressure from the U.S., which declared as a war crime "the wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages," and as a crime against humanity "inhumane acts against any civilian population." The U.S. military also operated under its own Field Manual 27-10: Rules of Land Warfare, which prohibited aerial bombing of civilian targets. However, as the Indigenous Americans continually reminded us, "White Man speaks with forked tongue," having violated every one of the more than 400 treaties signed with various Indigenous nations. Such deception has been a chronic pattern in the history of the "American civilization." This fact cannot be ignored forever!

<http://www.brianwillson.com/history-of-u-s-sabotage-of-korean-peace-and-reunification/>