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288 points Bezod | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.658s | source
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petcat ◴[] No.46199273[source]
Can we back up and just recognize how insane North Korea is? I think that future generations will look back on our history and wonder why nobody ever did anything about the incredible atrocities that took place in that country for decades.
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VWWHFSfQ ◴[] No.46199321[source]
It will definitely go down as one of the biggest failures of mankind. Especially since it was so easily preventable if MacArthur was permitted to just take the whole peninsula.
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timschmidt ◴[] No.46199545[source]
China was already sending troops and material to the front lines when MacArthur was ordered to stand down. Pushing further would have meant a hot war with China.
replies(1): >>46199680 #
petcat ◴[] No.46199680[source]
A hot war with China in 1950 was going to end quickly with the firepower USA had on-hand.
replies(2): >>46200064 #>>46200939 #
timschmidt ◴[] No.46200064[source]
There is no way we could match them in numbers on the ground. Such a conflict would have inevitably led to us nuking them as a result. Which is probably the reason decision makers chose not to.
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petcat ◴[] No.46200149[source]
And maybe that's really the humanitarian failure. That USA didn't nuke China in 1950 or 1951. Would have solved a lot of problems for generations of people.
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yongjik ◴[] No.46200203[source]
Wow, just half a dozen comments from why we're not saving North Koreans to "we could've nuked China and solved a lot of problems."

Some Hacker News threads are on their own level.

replies(1): >>46200249 #
petcat ◴[] No.46200249[source]
Well we know what happened to North Korea after China "won". And it's pretty fucking god-awful for 10s of millions of people for 80+ years.

USA dropping nukes probably would have been the better outcome for humanity.

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1. gpm ◴[] No.46200564[source]
USA dropping nukes would have prevented the convention against using nukes in wars from being started. I think there's a pretty good chance we wouldn't have any civilization left by now if we went down that fork in history.
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2. jojobas ◴[] No.46201559[source]
How is nuking Japan different from nuking Korea? Everybody agrees that forcing Japan to surrender with nukes was much better for everyone involved than a ground invasion.
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3. AngryData ◴[] No.46202523[source]
When Japan was bombed, nobody else in the world had nuclear weapons, the US only had 2, and there were only a handful of people outside of the US seriously researching nuclear weapons and were still years away from a test. By 1950 the USSR had working nuclear bombs, had proven so with a nuclear test, and a dozen other countries had started their own nuclear weapons programs.
4. nl ◴[] No.46202684[source]
It's different almost by definition?

Because it was a once (twice!) off the impact and significance of it is amplified.