Uncle Sam-bashing
is, unfortunately, quite popular these days among South Korea's
left, teachers and youth — burning the Stars and Stripes
and massive anti-U.S. street protests are all too common.
But now South
Korean radicals — many of them de facto North Korean pawns
— are threatening to tear down the 15-foot tall statue of
U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Inchon, the site of the intrepid
landing that changed the course of the bloody Korean War.
With U.S.-South
Korean relations already on the skids from disagreements over
North Korea's nuclear program to the future of U.S. troop basing,
it's a propitious time to bring our Old Soldier home and place
him where he belongs — among other American heroes on the
Mall in the nation's capital.
For the last
six months, activists have gathered around MacArthur's statue
above Inchon harbor for anti-American/anti-alliance hate-fests,
including violent attempts to topple the monument. The latest
rally was on Sept. 11, a date plainly chosen to sting Americans.
Just four
days before the 55th anniversary of the Sept. 15, 1950 landing,
4,000 anti-U.S. activists, armed with bamboo poles and metal pipes,
led assaults on the statue in Inchon's Freedom Park, calling MacArthur
"a war criminal who massacred numerous [Korean] civilians."
Pro-American
Koreans have spoken up, too. Indeed, 10,000 of them, including
South Korean Marine vets, headed to Inchon on the 15th to guard
the statue on the anniversary — at which point the protestors
wimped out, pulling a no-show.
How quickly
the Korean anti-American crowd forgets the facts of "The
Forgotten War" . . .
Without the
genius of MacArthur's Inchon landing, the U.S.-South Korean forces
then pinned down outside the southern city of Pusan would've certainly
been pushed into the sea, ceding the entire Korean peninsula to
Kim Il Sung's Soviet-backed communists.
Without Gen.
MacArthur's wartime leadership and the service of nearly 2 million
U.S. troops — and the death of 37,000 Americans —
the Republic of Korea, now one of the world's most vibrant democracies
and largest economies (11th largest), wouldn't exist today.
Actually,
MacArthur liberated Korea twice — the first time, at the
end of World War II, from a 35-year Japanese occupation and, then,
from North Korean, Chinese and Soviet communist aggression during
the Korean War.
It wasn't
just Americans and Korean vets that the protestors offended. The
U.K. ambassador to South Korea said that any attack on the MacArthur
statue denigrates soldiers from the 20 nations who fought and
died under MacArthur's U.N. command so that South Korea would
remain free.
Instead of
unprecedented peace and prosperity, 48 million South Koreans might
instead be enslaved today in Kim Jong Il's police state. Famine
is a daily reality in North Korea; over 200,000 live in political
prison camps. It would be worthwhile for the protestors to remember
that.
Yet last
month's assault on MacArthur's statue won't be the last. At some
point, the radicals may actually be able to pull down the monument,
offending Korean vets and millions of Americans who have selflessly
served — or serve — in South Korea to protect freedom
a long way from home and family.
MacArthur
was far from perfect, but he's a genuine American hero: highly-decorated
WWI vet, WWII Medal of Honor recipient, postwar leader of occupied
Japan and, arguably, America's greatest solider. He deserves better
than to have his name tarnished and monument assaulted.
MacArthur
isn't buried in Arlington National Cemetery, as so many American
heroes are, but in Norfolk, Va., alongside his second wife in
a small museum dedicated to his memory. It's time to bring a MacArthur
monument to Washington, D.C.
