Saturday, June 26, 2010

Korean War and declassified CIA cables

On the eve of the 60 anniversary of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, the US government declassifed endless CIA cables which it has kept underwraps for six decades.
They show that the CIA blinded by the accepted wisdom of the age that the hand of Stalin in the Kremlin was pulling the strings. So although the cables hint at a troop build up drifting southwards to the 38 parallel and the presence of Chinese in the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea aka North Korea], the spy agency had eyes riveted on Moscow.
So like the info the US government had of an al Qaeda attack on the US in 2001, the CIA misread the info. [GuamDiary suggests its readers to look at the declassified cables on the Internet.]
No longer can the nay sayers point the finger of blame on Truman's secretary of state Dean Acheson who in a speech at the beginning of 1950 put the Korean peninsula outside of the arc in the Pacific of America's strategic interests.
Supporters of the CIA have risen on their hindlegs in defence of the Agency. Many fell back on its youth--only 3 years old and still wet behind the ears. Give us a break, please!
The CIA recruited in the white and black arts the best and brightest of the early post World War 2 triumphalism. On staff, veterans of the OSS and OWI, recently demobed military, a thick slice of graduates of Ivy League universities and Catholic colleges, eager beavers to rollback the shadow of Communism darkening the 'free world'.
The simple truth is that a right mould of thought kept analyses in a tight jacket of the mind. Any idea outside the box got lost in the mail, so to speak.
So when the DPRK troops crossed the 38 parallel 60 years ago, the US was caught unawares.
Harry Truman promised full US support to defend the ROK [Republic of Korea aka South Korea] and days later swung the UN behind it to send troops to throw North Korean troops back and if possible defeat them complete and rollback the Bamboo Curtain to the Chinese border on the Yalu.
The war lingered for 3 years and left in an armistic limbo where it remains unto this day.
GuamDiary has commented on a newly released CFR [Council of Foreign Relations] report on Korea which it hopes will guide president Obama on policy towards the DPRK.
The Report is a glaring example of how the US mindset has remained substantially unchanged in the last 6 decades as it pertains to North Korea.
GuamDiary suggests a 1960 Rand Study by Robert Whiting, 'China crosses the Yalu'. Readers will be surprised how the US as leader of the UN forces fighting in Korea missed the opportunities to sweep the Communist government in Pyongyang out.
US muscular anti Communism assured America's stalemate in Korea as a first step in military defeat in Asia.

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