Korean War Veterans Deserve Our Thanks Too

Saying Thank You to Our Korean War Vets

“I am tired and sick of war,” said Gen. William T. Sherman.
If so, he was fortunate not to have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries, whose hostilities would have exhausted him.

There have been enough wars since Sherman’s day, in fact, that most of them have been consigned to history within less than a generation because succeeding conflicts have brought their own fresh terrors.

In the context of two world wars, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Iraq, for example, how much room has been left in the American consciousness for the war in Korea? How many Americans under the age of 50 know the background of the present issue of nuclear power in North Korea?

And yet it was a costly war, prompted by North Korea’s invasion of the South, an aggression resisted in large part and ultimately repelled by American forces. The war ended 53 years ago today with an armistice signed by the United States, North Korea and China but not before President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s implied threat to use atomic weapons against the North…

The United States suffered more than 33,000 battle deaths and Korean and Chinese casualties were many times higher.

The war in Korea was one of those bewildering conflicts that tries the intellect and the patience of many ordinary citizens. But when a man or woman puts on the uniform of the United States military, leaves home and family and career behind, and travels to a strange place from which there may be no returning, the era and the issue and internal differences over foreign policy these don’t reduce our debt and our gratitude.

Those who did their duty to flag and country in Korea deserve the same thanks and respect as that we afford to veterans of Trenton, Antietam, Normandy, and Baghdad.

If we haven’t said so lately, we say now with the poet: “Thanks, thanks, and again thanks.”

http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060727/OPINION01/607270356/1079