Posted on 04/14/2019 11:37:31 PM PDT by robowombat
The Chinese took a lot of casualties, but they blew us back to the 38th parallel. And we had the board ships at Won San Harbor, blow up all the supplies we couldn’t carry and sail away.
I would phrase it “part of a team” rather than a “cog in a machine.”
They convinced Truman that an attack on the Chinese mainland would be folly. However bad they were, that peasant army set the stage for where we are today.
“They convinced Truman that an attack on the Chinese mainland would be folly.”
Truman should have listened to MacArthur.
L
I was a US Army infantry officer in the 80's and 90's. The observations in the article dovetail with my experience being around Arab officers. The Pakistani's were the smartest and most competent, followed by the Egyptians. The worst by far were the Saudi officers, who seemed to disdain having to do any work whatsoever.
Saudi Arabia is the paper tiger of the middle east. They only exist because the US government is their ally. They have spent trillions of dollars on military equipment, but in my opinion, couldn't even perform company level combat operations. The M1A2 tanks that Saudi Arabia possesses are likely just left in the motorpool and not maintained, except by people of non Saudi nationality.
My father and brother lived in Saudi Arabia during the 70's. They also told me Saudi's disdain manual labor, and think nothing of not paying you after you have done work for them. My dad told me the Saudis really dislike the Yemenis and view them as akin to slaves. Also, they bring in poor Philippino girls as maids and treat them terribly.
I would like to point out that Egyptians are not Arab, but a completely different ethnic group. Neither are Libyans-they are Berbers.
The real million dollar question is how competent are the Iranians militarily? Of course they are not Arabs-they are Persians, but I would love to find out just how capable they are. They are the most destabilizing force in the Middle East.
Sounds like a good read.
One word:
Slaves
Do you think the Iran-Iraq war is any indication of their capability?
Even though it was 30+ years ago, do you think they have changed any of their fundamental deficiencies?
Before Islam, the Persian culture was one of the most advanced societies of the time. Now look where they are.
You really can't do business with them because they think it's fine to steal from Westerners...in fact anyone who is not Shia. They hold all Sunni muslims in utter contempt. They pirate software (which of course made them susceptible to certain computer viruses) and anything else that has copyrights in the Western world.
For many reasons discussed above, I think they may be technically capable of developing nuclear weapons, but fighting a war against an adversary who is competent at the tactical, operational and strategic levels is not something Iran is capable of doing, imho.
However, Iran has a population of about 82 million, many of whom are well educated. To put that number in perspective, the US population was about 132M at the beginning of WWII. Hence the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's was a war of attrition and Iran had the larger population.
My dad worked with some guys who were in the Merchant Marine during WWII. A couple of 'em were torpedord and spent days/weeks in a lifeboat. Both of 'em said that the first to die off were the Muslims and Indians, followed by the young guys. The first two groups just gave up and wouldn't lift a finger to help in their survival.
Well, it would make a very good question and I would like someone to ask her. Perhaps on her twitter page? Or, will they censor a sincere question and banish you.
China in 1950 was “considerably more backward than the Arab states in 1960” when China entered the Korean War against a well-armed American-led coalition. “Only one-quarter to one-third of the Chinese infantrymen even had rifles. The vast majority went into battle with only grenades,” he writes, yet Chinese military performance “was first class in every category.”
The Chinese attack on Korea involved over a million volunteers, and those numbers are by themselves more than enough to explain the rapid but shortlived success of the invasion. A North Korean general warned against it, pointing out our experience with large amphibious landings and the fact that Korea is a peninsula. No one listened. He was right. :^) China's official figures are under 200K dead Chinese, but their losses were more than twice that high.
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